So I have been happy in German, but it's easier for me to be happy in Spanish, and there some situations in which you have to choose between two different forms of happiness. Let's take an artificial …
And so it goes, day after day, night after night, as I rattle these torn and cheapened canvases around the dim and dusty byways of this once great nation. My tent is always full. Some come to weep, …
I left Lover when I found dirt roads—party for another/couple, soirée complete with deer heads lining a fixed-up barn’s walls,/absinthe, strung lights. In pairs, we played pissing …
The drone operator does not see the Predator itself, the predator himself, the Predator is in Afghanistan, the operator in Nevada. We are stars struck on the edge. The difference between my sight and …
To talk about language we’re faced with the problem of the prisoner describing the walls of her prison: she knows them better than any other living being—she defines her existence by them...
And in the flash point I was manacled, I saw / our fierce mirroring was never / friendship, twin-ship, / but a crafty fisherman's net, / a supplanting spider's stratagem-I saw / how slowly and …
The geese continued to eat. / The eggs absorbed the oil. / I tried to pick out the mother / while my father asphyxiated embryos, / his head turned towards the gaggle in humane / say-so. I wanted to …
I raise my hand. / A conductor. Darling, lightning, / let’s begin. You, singing / in the off key. Me, / in the wrong
skin again. Hold / your applause. Don’t / approve. It’s not / like that. …
It is as dumb to deny the tragic character of the world, as it is to deny the necessity of hope in your account of human life. The telling question for the artist is: what sequence are you going to …
I had no such marks on my body and feared growing one as I slept. If I were to do such a thing, this meant I would be like my mother: incalculable. I did not want to be like my mother. I wanted only …
Inside, I see Franny's black-and-white high school picture everywhere, the same one in different sizes: flaxen crew cut and upturned head, delicate cheekbones like his mother, shoulders squared in …
I was standing on the cold, dark tile of the bathroom floor when I realized I didn't know how to live without him. It was Sunday. I was barefoot, brushing my teeth. What happened was this: I decided …
I was walking to Higher Grounds when the first one fell from the sky. A whirring sound preceded him so I was able to side-step to avoid a direct blow. He hit the ground at a distressing angle. Kevin …
Tomorrow she’ll get up early, ride so long that she’ll be bicycling in her dreams. But as she approaches the house, she wonders, what has she changed by spending this money? Nothing. Just another …
All axe-work, he says, the beams and the thousands of wooden shingles covering the roof and walls. The beams in the newer bays are shorter, mounted on stone footings, and do not match the towering …
It was disrespectful, a slur, something we were briefed not to do. The men tried, they really did, but the name stuck. Over time I let it go. I cut the men some slack because, after all, you've got …
The electronic symbol for ground looks like a sailboat on a tiny sea. The semaphore has an alphabet of two flags. Before Marconi’s wireless, to talk to people far away, one could beat a drum, blow …
The table with an uneven leg / is wrapped in white ruffles, / a candle flickers / and Baby Jesus / opens his eyes – shutters beneath / his curly stucco hair. / After I threw him from his bed of hay …
Una mesa de pata dispareja / envuelta en fustán zapoteca, / el cirio agoniza, / un niño Dios abre los ojos como postigos y / su cabello estuco rizado, / cuando lo tiré de su cama de heno / pegué …
You are washing dishes on a Friday night. You are beyond the lives you could have led. You are only some of what you used to be. You scratch away and handle. You stare in the cleanliness of clean …
The moon in the house is Room 237 /
Room No. 42 /
On 2/21 when my dreams became real /
The moon smashed into the light /
I spread my life like cards in front of me /
If I die and …
Otabenga Jones & Associaes looks to the history of black power movements
from the 1960s through the 1980s to edify their ties to the past, to continue
successful methods of community action, …
1. In Texas, a man burned the Mexican flag in front of the Alamo. He tried to get a permit to do it, but the city said no. They didn't issue permits for burning nylon or polyester or rayon in …
1. Every essay on (the impossible of) translation resembles every other, but this one is happy in its own way. Like a striptease that leads only to more clothing, let's begin with a contradiction: …
I'm thinking here of the proto-Indo-European root / which means the precise sound of a flower bud / unwrapping, and the tiny racket a seed makes / cracking open in the dark, which has evolved / in a …
The train's familiar whistle and the foghorn's high bass note under it make a chord as I drive along the river, my windows down under a low, cut on the bias moon as it moves like a slug …
They scuttle, exoskeleton-like, on the path ahead. / Like a glove my gloved hand / fits to your ungloved hand, our major / to minor keys, and all the pines / and all the pianos in the woods / hold …
Everywhere we step / we step into the ejaculate / of the sun. Splurge / of daisies, spree of plums. / I am not ungrateful / for what I have not been given. / I do not begrudge / the rolling hills / …
The season settles in strips the trees of leaves the heart
of the matter is weather I have been wind sheared storm
wracked thrown off course and down I have been
all river no shore …
The day the starling flock tumbles twists whirls through / dusk their scissor beaks clattering like rattled bones / the day they rain down deafening and feathered as if / smoke knows knives as if …
Ending language dominance requires resources, patience, and tremendous willingness to work together with others in ways that are not always comfortable. To construct a space where no language …
