Pat Robertson Transubstantiation Engines
NO. 1 First I was fellating an African despot for his diamonds, next I was paying a hooker to give me back my teeth. You think I’m kidding about the diamonds; I was looking also for some gold. … Continued
Artificial Intelligence
Nurse Clappy Gets His
A twelve-year-old girl, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, waits for anyone other than me to walk by the glass walls of her hospital isolation room. She half-sits half-lies on a high mechanical bed with hard gray plastic rails; seven days … Continued
That the Soul Discharges Her Passions upon False Objects
The amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false and frivolous. —Montaigne, from his essay with more or less the same title as this poem … Continued
Happiness
It began with the smell of burning. Daily, before my eyes even opened, dream narratives, swept up into Suddenly the sky turned black climaxes, collapsed, undermined by the identification, all too familiar, of the acrid scent nearly universally recognized as … Continued
Ballast
The orchestra has committed suicide. I never wanted love. I never wanted love. I want fuchsia, frying pans, the sea, my name seeks atonement, I’m sinking to the floor, a red skillet, duck fat, … Continued
Pollice Verso
Three months after his prison stint for starting a forest fire that killed a man, Armando’s father drives his family past the Supermax outside Florence, Colorado. He’s in good spirits. “You know the guy that invented the Richter scale? Dude … Continued