He exists. On the red & blue mats under the lights of a city he leaps a fluorescent arc, teeth grinding in hurt pride even when he knows we love him. My little friend, the daughter of his swindling employer swears he is no more than nineteen. I try not to think of it at […]
Category: writing
the way we drink it
The first time we drank it the incense cut our throats raw, diffused up a concentration gradient of sawdust & gaseous disease as she said to me, tongue purple & jiggling: “Under the dying sun our faces were a shade of iron comparable to rain.” She wrapped her little finger around mine that were elongated […]
Outlanders
This is what i think about palpitating under 2 am peace and steady cement: Between the newspaper office and home by a ceremonial mountain is a place called summer; our skin liquifies every time we trespass in floral ties and birth certificates umbrella-blessed against harsh winds or sunshine. we have a way of protecting ourselves, […]
Summer
It is the third time this year summer aged for her, every night for eighty-four nights golden dreams reincarnate as the hours relive and we count with our fingers with fatigue, not pity. For even as her lips stretch wide she is glistening with the sweat of labor and heart disease, her empty hair […]
Sleep talk
That girl, I said you here, you look like my cousin. I said this as I drew her down on a piece of scrap she ripped out of a drawing book. She had a mole slanted down her nose and her upper lip was full, and when she smiled it didn’t curl but there you […]
Sisyphus
White dreams of Sisyphus we taste them at daybreak we taste them like lubricants we gulp without tongue we taste and we taste as his knuckles fall out. Midday today he sleeps and he prays he prays on all fours grey eyes to his knees he drinks from greased cartridges his boulder is black. […]
A Case Study of Eyelash Growth
Her eyelashes grew exponentially. She only wished to be cured. The doctors said the disease was exceptional, never seen before. She submitted to tears, which only nourished her lashes and accelerated their growth. Tweezing was a temporary solution. Cutting provided peace no longer, a matter of hours elapsed before the lashes attained their previous length. […]
My brother is cottonwood
My brother is cottonwood. He stands on his favorite toe, eyes ground-touching yearning the sky. My brother is a boy. I say, “give it up, you don’t deserve it.” “Go away, woman.” he says. The day I cropped my hair short he tried to take it from me. That’s how he knew. Everyday I cut […]
John Dies
I should have learned to be more cautious of pyramids like this. The golden advancements of sand triangular reversed, a mere blurb to the camel industry we so admired. Because the red sand flying is but another autopilot, and in my dictionary there is no such word as “fall”. When rumbling sounds conveyed to us […]
Time and Again
Time and again you flashed a blue smile. You were eaten by hunger. The coffee store around the corner filled you with apologies. You sat there with your hands cupping milk, a checkered scarf twisted around your summer neck. It was an island of indecency. Department Head of Justice, a short elderly with receding ears, stopped […]