Holding Pattern
You always be seein some wacky shit on the train. Bitch slap a nigga for eyein her. Nigga piss on somebody who piss him off. Somebody get they throat slit over a gold chain. Shit like that. Like this … Continued
The Literary Review
Chasing a Ghost: Portrait of My Father
YOU DO NOT CHASE A GHOST BY LOOKING DIRECTLY BUT BY CATCHING HIS REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. YOU LOOK BEHIND. My father Thomas is long gone, and this year I have outlived his fifty-five years. In the forty years since … Continued
A Dependency
You can lose your brother to Hell and still be happy inside your house. The house has many rooms. You find elegance in its brown walls and furnishings, and though the flames that rush past … Continued
Crying
Instead of crying on your shoulder I cry on the internet. Instead of crying I make allusions to crying by cherry picking the subjects. Instead of crying on his shoulder I build a fountain of black amethyst … Continued
The Neon Touch
Kelly, whose mother had rolled up the Subaru windows and driven into a lake, took photos of crushed up anti-depressants. Each pill, Kelly said, represented an unanswered question about her mother’s suicide. Sophia, whose parents … Continued
A Rare Condition
After being poked & blood tested by the specialist who spoke Hmmm In several dialects including an obscure amputee sign language I eavesdropped On her conferring with beleaguered foreign colleagues by the soda machine, Whispering vowel-heavy polysyllabic antiseptic gibberish; apparently, … Continued
Open Call
Because of the number and severity of the stab wounds and the disorder of his room, which indicated a violent struggle, the death of Horton Smith Juaire Jr. was at first listed as a homicide. It was not until after … Continued
The Boobie Trap
“Redwoods,” Hammond said, “hold this earth together. They never lose the dirt.” He stomped. “Roots this wide—” He did a full arm wingspan from where he sat in the center of the living room in his big easy, meaning to … Continued
Drafts of Love: five poems
translated from French and Arabic by Susanna Lang and Kay Keikkinen A woman walks by hands in her pockets once she has passed out of sight I’ll forget your last words I no longer know if … Continued
Interrogation V ||| Diode
He isn’t giving me any answers. His book of scripture is open on the floor. If I lean in close, with my lips next to his ear, He whispers back verse after verse. It’s no use … Continued
We Went to Iceland
It was the year we went to Iceland. Not everyone, mind you. A few were happy with what was going on at home. Who needed a passport when you could have a gun? We went to Iceland because it … Continued
Granary
When we first started talking about this issue’s theme, I compiled in my mind a cluster of associations and ideas that emerged from granary: plenitude, agriculture, resources, food, slow steady movement. A series of images: red barns, tall silos, highways … Continued
I dreamed my mother condemned ||| BOAAT
my lingerie I’d accidentally sent her a photo of myself in the new black cling-wrap meant for my lover my thumbs go loose after 2 a.m. … Continued
Honey in the Carcase ||| The Threepenny Review
Ivan Medvedich was washing his silvery mustache after eating a slice of dark bread with honey when a whistle cut through the air, deepened in frequency, and sank into an explosion that shook … Continued
At the Beach ||| SoftBlow
The distance from one person to the next was equal to the length of a Bridge. There. Right at the edge of it Forty-four full miles from the heart of the house to where the road hit … Continued
And Are We Yet Alive ||| The American Journal of Poetry
The woman has a Salt Lake stormcloud for a hairdo. She yells from her wheelchair like a man whose prayers have gone unanswered for years. There’s no one else in the hallway. The flesh of her neck … Continued
Self-portrait before Penalty Kick ||| Prairie Schooner
You are on the line the ref’s whistle opens a cloud opens your stomach its shrill is something you swallow a silence opens like a door and on the other side are one thousand closed mouths … Continued
Wanting a Lover Man ||| Berkeley Fiction Review
Some people never stop talking, and that was, I am certain, without any doubt, the main problem with Bubba. I am certain of it. Every morning ‘round nine a.m. he came into Mrs. Holtin’s Supermarket and sat … Continued
[If the rain is everywhere]
If the rain is everywhere and it is we will soon be taking to the boats and carrying with us only our most precious and lightest things: the birds, in pairs or in flocks, two or … Continued
Home with H
Translated from Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy Especially in spring in a large party it is clear which persons are closest to death: They don’t know why they avoid each other’s gaze One stares himself blind … Continued