Poetry

In one borough of a city nearly out of surgical masks, a jazz station repeats like the dream of a better country. Doctors and nurses labor around the clock, dictating a Last Will & Testament between critically-ill patients— given who we are as Americans, the respirator-rhythm alleges we triumph or perish one grim breath at

No line divides us from the squirrel washing its face with its hands, or the bird with a piece of string in its mouth, or the man walking in sandals in winter. A dog barks by the stone wall that is crumbling. The wind’s scouring the leafless tree. It has no note—no voice, the invisible

Without a boogie board, you’d fling your body into the curve of the Pacific. Without baby oil, you’d still burn & be tender for days. Without a blanket, you’d drop your faded Eddie shirt, sit—or later, shake it out & mop off the salt. Without shades, you’d razor your hand like a visor—squint at five

Or Schwammerl. What you’d have called Schubert, standing over his 1.5 meters, if you were lucky enough to be his friend. If you were Augie Bank’s friend & Jewish, had broken your nose when tackling him in a Sherman Park sandlot game, he’d call you FNK in public, but slip you a sketch of your mug, captioned Flat-Nose-Kike, when

I don’t comb my hair  or paint my waif face  or clothe my scant body  in matching colors.    Who sees them now?    I do care for this body  I wash it, and oil it for comfort,  eat seeds and nuts  and greens.    For it contains my words  That I still send, more

a poem from The Cannibal’s Cookbook A part of you believes comme ci comme ça applies to you. It begins kind of noticeable and kind of painless like when you peel the skin away from a sunburn. It’s nourishing swallowing slivers of your cheek to give back to yourself in the so-so times after your

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

in purgatory there are only beds         with blue sheets no, the walls are white                        the bathroom floors, red tile, water    slick. in purgatory. you are watching.          close your eyes. there is nothing you can do.                there is always something you can do. no the walls are white,                        the bathroom floors red. tile water

Our train moved faster until our country was a blue fold in the horizon. Passengers remained still as our carriage fell off the dining table. You smiled with lips that had dried as you queued in the snow for monthly rations. That day, you brought back the carcass of a bird, laid it on the

His heart punched me. Now, not just the random heart strokes that everyone else is talking about or was talking about yesterday but the infinitesimal strokes that are what I most held onto after his last breath. I cannot begin to tell you the last breath—deep gutted scent of what couldn’t be eaten. He so

The rain is a hood       pulled over the world. Our neighbor’s house, vanishes.         & its windows through which we watch things             undress. The plastic deer neck-bent        as if chewing up the lawn go the way of other deer,        of the wolves,        the arroyo turned creek again.                     & beyond

  circa January 20, 2009 Some were perched on the limbs Of D.C. trees to get a glimpse of it, History being made, once again, In the middle of so much black & white, To hear Aretha spin her rhythm with Our blues into a hymn where hymns Had never been made, up close. All

  Rainbows exist, the nurse explains, not in the troposphere, but only on the viewer’s retina. Then, staring at her iPhone as if it housed time, or regret, she excuses herself. Alone till my pupils dilate and the doctor arrives, I have leisure to ponder how doubt can enter the eye socket of the body

  Visions of Thelonious Sphere Monk at The club piano, playing “Monk’s Dream” Or “Green Chimneys” or “Well You Needn’t,” Man oh man, those were great nights to be there When the musical genius in the fedora Showed up four hours after he was due to play, But none of the customers seemed to mind

Where the edges of homes run together an incision of alley just wide enough for bodies to pass without scraping the paint off the bricks. A flowerless plot of raised earth meant for greener things. If those are strays praying wildly with their teeth, it’s not to the moon. I don’t think we’d recognize that

My father is in bed half a country away telling my mom how to make chicken from the sun. His cancer opens a shadow hand in his brain and where it darkens, the world slides sideways. He looks through the window by his bed into the 1940s. He thinks it’s TV and he tells me

Toine has a new stereo. Mystikal grumbles “Shake ya ass, but watch yo self. Shake ya ass” into the street. A squirrel crushed by a car, baking on the pavement— you have a stick in hand to prod the roadkill, but Chris passes grayscale porn printouts, hot sauce stained. You can’t see much because of

who would have known the brick the nostril i ask you cheek-to-cheek my my, much and much to be this thread to follow my shatterings but it is… lovely so lovely aren’t we?  which is appendix and for enough not true of forearm handles/hammers. do not confuse lashes wet for frame of mind’s eye or

You can cry quite long in a diner without much interruption, assuming the diner is only moderately populated, the décor is outdated and immaculate, and you are capable of the type of crying during which tears do not disrupt your posture. You must hold inside a muscular sorrow and a sense of endurance for torture

this morning I woke up spiny and sharp-tongued turned my eyes towards the sun some things are born this way       long slice down the midsection where I am cut, the living gel pours out glutinous after the night has gone, persistence of dreams think of a mirror       memory of a mirror slippery as mercury, a

Flooded with off-key carousel music days careen by, dizzying thoughts, meaning more blown out than a famous self-taught trumpeter’s cheeks. Patted down & packed into shrinking seats, I feel myself ballooning into less. Flew away yet took it all with me, on fire doused in northwest tranquility. Obscured by clouds in the brain, I knew

Deflowered dreams thin the air on a gorgeous day & peace becomes an iridescent thing, flitting at the corners of your eyes, darting by indecipherable. A pair of ginkgoes’ finery blares gold as they shed, flared arms reach toward things long buried, tapping kegs of tears that today’s young already understand root, volume & salty

I stitched the Halloween costume my son chose, its blue cape heralding an orange capital G, a bobble-nosed mask. He didn’t like each fitting but new blue jammies were fine. All dressed, he revealed the child he was— standing still, waiting, his look expectant, began to melt away. Had I left in a pin, was

Stealing glances at the glowering clockface, Wednesday afternoon, the workweek’s foreboding balance sheet. The liabilities are quarts of good intentions rotting on the vine. Beading assets are teaspoonfuls of quicksilver. Quarts and teaspoons are inscrutable units. Meaning-well carries Happy Hour arguments in favor of ascending out of the red. Unventured ventures worm into old wounds

Was I so small and contained, small to together with younger sister Julie, contained to swim, sunlit, shore to shore, across the ocean of a washtub filled with water? Swimsuits, summer trips to Thayer Missouri, grandparents’ farmhouse, from the picnic table, mother and father cackle. Adulthood and its ulterior motives, I tried very hard to

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

4 de julio: costa verde  We turn the corner and I see her doubled over the seaside bench in taut, iridescent blue. Every movement, slight: fingers skim the ankle, head angles up, shoulders roll down. Her partner approaches from behind, teardrops half-painted beneath his eyes. When he walks he walks stilted, a rhythm: green coast.

We sit in the failure factories; we, the apparition of working mothers clutching our utility shut-off notices. This form says provide proof of your destitution, please summarize your poverty please add emotional abuses in these two lines please multiply by the darkness of the members of your household; keep your faces down, fill out the