Category: Issue 19

            heaven is a compound             word                         the sun sunders            us dazzling            so you don’t have to            wonder what wound …

IN THE OUTDOOR SHOWER WITH MY PREGNANT WIFE The old frisbee from Burger Chef, once redbut faded now the pale pink of my wife’swidening aureoles, lies upturnedbeneath the saltwater drip of our saggingbeach towels. This world is full of objectssuccumbing to the gentle ebb of decay. But her body—loosening breasts and blue-veined thighs caughtin a…

UPDATE The boy builds a four-throated fishout of cardboard. The fish lips flap, blue-taped, from a body thatcarried bottles. See! He saysa large-mouth bass. I’d have smiled once (inwardly of course) at his fine imaginary, thought him unspoiled, amusing himselfwith the trash.                               Wasn’t I…

to any God that made mefeel ashamed.  Girls are takers,Mama used to say. I took every lesson     she gave me, learned  to swim out of my body & abandon it. With incense I burned pagesuntil a perfect eye stared back.  God drilled a hole to make us see. See? Mine is filthy.   He, too, eyed me each day afterschool,   …

Not the storm, but the calm. Not the flurry of attention               called to the sky.Not the rumour of a hurricane on the horizon.Not humidity, the mosquitoes rising               like smoke from the fields. Not a history of revisions we call             …

  Each morning is the same            but I can’t help but look again and again: skin smooth peony petal, vanilla-ice-            cream-cool; hair a ripple of milk pulled back too tight (though sometimes I forget the aching);             even my eyes are eggshells. Only…

  The absence of faith is the beginning of death.What I call flesh is prayer bound to my bones. All my prayers begin as songs from my bonesand end with blood instead of amen. How I wish I began every request with amen,like when I ask God to let doubt pass from me. Amen. Oh…

We are building a house small in the woods,  refuge from disquietor vague boredom. It must weather distance,the hurt of proximity. We do not mean to,though we are so good  at breaking, scavenging old bone and feather, stalks of  wildflowers outlasting the hour of their heads.  You are boss, and look boss, hammer and spackle knife and blue hair,…

DREAMING OF THE GOVERNOR AND THE MAYOR PLUNGING INTO THE RIVER Perhaps conjoined at the ankleby a concrete block, like the tailsof Pisces. Yes, let them embrace the East River together in early morning so they may be blessedat last by the light of a new dayrising beautifully without them.         MY DAD’S BIRTHDAY…