Six years ago, in the autumn after I graduated college, I got a job in a coffee shop staffed almost exclusively by gay ex-meth addicts from Texas. They all hated me. Upon reflection, I think my …
We made it, baby. / We're riding in the back of the black / limousine. They have lined / the road to shout our names. / They have faith in your golden hair & pressed blue suit. They / have a good …
In my history, I was bones eating paper / or I was paper eating bones. Semantics. / I lived in a narrow house; / I lived with a man who said / You fucked up your own life, who said / I could never …
1. Visiting Professor Florin C. Merisoreanu feels the pain in the left side of his chest more keenly on Tuesdays than on Thursdays. On Tuesdays he shares an office on the Upper West Side, at …
By morning, our tongues were covered with fuming blisters, prickly like scorpion bicchuu grass, growing between the gaps in silica-laden stones laid down the path to the Haida Khan temple, right …
Philip Metres, Sand Opera Alice James Books, 2015. Paperback, 112 pp, $16.95 (paper) There is a growing awareness of the breadth of work from contemporary Arab and Arab American poets …
If the umbilical cord stretches straight, the baby will live a life of ease, but if it is looped around itself, the child will grow strange and have a wild imagination. If it is looped around her …
My dog haunts me, too. The worst ghosts are the ones that are alive. You yearn for them, and yet you have no closure. They continue breathing and eating and sleeping and dreaming. And you do the …
Unable to form words, I nodded. I could see both her hands now, the thick veins running through them. When I looked down, her sweatshirt was gone. A dark stain had spread across my un-tucked shirt. …
There is no no?choice in Aquarium & color makes everything a little thing. There is only one way in & out—it is like a labyrinth, but you might be a shark or a tiger or a rattlesnake & there is …
At the time of my Uncle John’s death in the intensive care unit of the hospital up in Fargo, Minnesota, he had in his possession one leather jacket with attached liner, one pair of sweatpants size …
Each of the women of this roundtable is quickly ascending to the realm of notoriety; each is winning prizes, awards, and praise like medals on a general's chest. These women are boss. I consider …
The old priest did not seem well. He approached the altar, moving haltingly, pausing some? times to look at the ground before taking a step. A younger priest went before him. When they reached the …
Level one is the snow and level two is a parking garage and level three is a room full of books. Level four is the middle of the night and level five is the summer, beers and water bottles, cookies …
“It reminds me of Zimbabwe,” Nyasha says as he stares out the car window at the changing landscape of Jamaica’s northeastern coast. Trees with lush, green leaves fringe the two-lane road. …
Sé que me llamo Victorio. Sé que creen que estoy loco (versión cuya insensatez a veces me enfurece, otras tan sólo me divierte). Sé que soy diferente a los demás, pero también mi padre, mi …
Sergio Pitol Demeneghi is arguably Mexico’s greatest living short-story writer, novelist, and translator. He was raised in the countryside of Veracruz. After studying law and philosophy in Mexico …
Smith lay on his back, on the top bunk of the rack he and I shared in Machine Gun’s squad bay, with both of his feet tied to the wooden support beams that ran to the ground. Smith and Ulrich had …
Too much neck, in fact, a whole lotta neck, neck like a lorgnette, gentle as a cuticle. But I forget the motto of Airport. I forget some people like themselves. I remove your pants each night to see …
I don’t believe I ever thanked you for dying when you did. How quietly you left, making your entrance into the vestibule of dying -- pressing your left temple with your left palm, your right with …
First light; minus tide; above the Pacific Ocean bowl the moon is drawing the sea up into a green nipple craving her mouth. Here, above the pine-tops, the air is making grey breaths, like my …
She was standing near a departure gate, / sandal-footed, her wiggly hair / and the latticework of her mercury footwear / the same satiny gold, and there was something / wistful about her, under the …
It’s just a chapped lip that won’t stop bleeding. Let me Try that again: strip where the field of the face meets The woods of the mouth is called the invitation —No, It’s called the …
The woman is divided into an arctic region and a subarctic region. There are no forests in the arctic, but shrub willows gather in fists on her. The soil everywhere is poor. …
From the Art Lies Feature: Prepositional Art I was inspired by the work of Lee Krasner and her urban themed collages, in particular her large 1953 collage City Verticals . My work consists of a …
When the actress, poet, playwright, and activist Ruby Dee died in June 2014, I noticed various images of her online and in the newspapers. I had always admired her long and passionate relationship …
Volumes of fiction and poetry, as well as specific poems and stories, often carry dedications, but we generally don’t consider them as central to the meaning of the texts, unless they are part of …
Incrementally all at once / behind a shiny metal hatch, a gumball, a clank / of shut over the dark / that rolled out red to meet me. / Nonetheless, chomp, chomp, / I am loved, a penny given, spent / …
In the spring of 2015 there were, by chance, two related shows at Chelsea galleries next door to each other: Ralph Humphrey: Conveyance (paintings 1974-1977) at Garth Greenan Gallery and Blinky …
I survived sheets of rain under / the thatched eaves of a / stranger’s house. / For months, heartbreak has / been tearing / blue notes from me. / When the tide drains, / I crawl into a body / that …
How little we know, in the end. That a boat can stall / at the edge of the sea, until it is / overturned, at last, by what it loves most. That love is / the fortress with no walls / and winding …
i never had enough kens so i / made my barbies fuck / each other or fuck beanie babies. / i never had more than one beanie baby per / species. they were rarer / that way & like some perverted / …
Each morning my mother wandered across a bed of jasmine / petals & picked phal. Each fig bursting / with sweet flesh, a seedy caramel. We only ate fruit / my aunt says & her hands fill with the …
the woman next to me has been dead / seventy years / she says she lost her husband / i say i've lost mine too / i tell her last night his ghost arrived in / a text message / in the morning it was …
Ma's always on me about my diet. Always on me about the / heart attack and the stomach acid / and the diabetes. And if it aint one thing / it's a goddamn nother. So what if my liver gave out? So what …
Your folks were about to downsize anyway. The Ford. / The riding lawnmower. Letting go of the furniture / was harder. The hope chest / had sailed from Norway with Great-Grandpa Morris in 1904, / but …
Seeing myself hung / in the mirror at the end of the hall / is no different than when I would come up / against my face / as a child, and think / I do not look like someone / yet. And now, while …
I know ten bright-eyed ways to start a breakfast. Borrowed / and blue, / pregnant as a 19th century hot air balloon, no longer / just a pretty face, / your butter colored wife. Right / here. This …
A beautiful young woman stands naked at the shoreline in one birthing video, while the Black Sea laps at her thighs. Her equally beautiful friends hold her up like a crucified Jesus as she sways …
This week your baby is learning guile, wears / a homespun vernix jumpsuit. It is the size / of one night. / Your baby weighs the same as the box you've carried / unopened through three moves. / This …
What I do is absorb. Pah-pah, pah-pah. I hear the punches when I walk these rainy streets. I hear them when I sleep. I hear them in the small hours on my knees in the dark, running my cut-up hands …
After expiration I stare hours / at the Hurricane lamp. Outside / spring rain fell on Soria / fell on the laurel she'd planted / now happy in the onslaught of / spring / Miguel, my spirit is shred. I …
The giraffes and hairy German widows / crying in the western district / of the city...exaggerated moon / and the world aching on its hinges— / sepia republic handbills / slapped by wind against the …
A roe deer shot in Slovenia / has a single antler, looks / like it has just walked out / of a fairy tale, marvels / the hunter, marvels / the scientist. Worlds such as this / were not thought …
Pogroms are / playing out on our plew as our dollars fall free / at last saying, there's so much to see and do, so much / to do one's bit in before the epiblast breaks / and we all must bed. In front …
The receptionist holds up / a small paper bag / stapled shut. Whatever / you had worth saving. / You look, then look away. / Once, hungover / on a gut-and-remodel job / in Grafton, you cracked the …
I could change / my name, turn my liver / black. But when break is over, / I'm on the palletjack. Gary, one eternity / machine over, came to work so drunk / he messed his self, Sugar said, / then ate …
Later you say this to me: / The blank space is how / I honor it, deliciously gone. / Even the fog makes promises, / spans the hips of mountains. / Such great heights. / The fire wet ashes / we cannot …
I’ve been thinking about the space a body needs / to move in, how it’s getting harder to tell / who owns property in my brain / versus who is just renting.
I began, an apology springing instantly to my lips. I took a step back. She jumped to her feet and turned for a shopping cart that I hadn’t associated with her that was in the nearby bushes. She …
My ship is rough as a body, my body / a ship. Even pigs in space are wrapped / in purple and lace, eager to explode / inside the invisible sky of women’s work. / But when it’s time to play the …
We burn love wherever we find it, / smother darkness from the hungry stage. / Our wonder is a shadow; our slumber, a bear— / Ursa’s Minor chord without her Major lift. / Yes, I know!...
This morning I am hopelessly optimistic / that I can fix everything I have ever written, / including this. By noon, you’ll find me / weeping inconsolably, up to my elbows / in wires and blood...
I fell in love with Amy Winehouse when I first heard her Back To Black album. I assumed she was a middle-aged African American woman—and (like many others) was amazed to find she was a young …
Early in their relationship, Cortez wrote poems dedicated to some of Edwards’s “Lynch Fragment” series of sculptures. Here, many decades later, he reciprocates, by dedicating a new “Lynch …
the dart of fish faint at our ankles, each shuttered
BBQ shack a kudzu flash / in my side mirror. Pleasure has become the itch / of a mosquito bite between / my shoulders, and your rough thumb on …
spend nearly all day with / their necks down, / lips moving an inch above the ground as if / they are whispering to grass. / Even in the rain, with its soft drone, when their / coats darken to a …
I have a heart as wide as the Mississippi Delta. All sorts / of things grow there: cotton, peanuts, / pigweed. Sometimes I have to fly through / with a big spray of Roundup just to get rid of it all. …
I forgot the prairie because it stood so / still. I forgot the clouds because they / were always moving. I forgot / the taste of water because it lay quietly inside the / taste of everything. / I …
The priest asked if I would like to light the candles. There was a holder near the altar with several candles and then one large candle standing to the side. The large candle was decorated with …
Here and now, this blue winter sky, / and outside a light / frost, / the windows of the houses / and the windows of the cars / I walk out on the porch, and my glasses / fog up / I start my car to …
Since I have cultivated a dislike for football / for as long as I can remember, never playing / or watching, and since I can make nothing / of the nomenclature of X’s and O’s my coach / friend …
Waiting at a jitney stop, these boys / in school uniform. Today’s history lesson / told of voyagers on a ship whose mainsail blessed / the New World with a painted cross. / A Carib elder greeted …
Toes numb in the brackish waters but no great waning : / The rooms were gabardine, were doily. Each a different monogram : / When the men are afraid they are men. Yesterday is tall : No sailors sank …
Ragtime wounds, my friends, ragtime wounds : / The balloon man hoists a mosaic emotion : / Tell us the one about the sinking island—point to the very spot : / Summer peaches we said, as if there …
Bees bumble, cumulus ensues, and that’s the new precision : / They hailed for love, an October grammar, the linking orchard : / The opposite of agency is weathervane : / Show us again, the …
Marooned! With only this shred of wind-tangled orange / polypropylene, the frosty dented rim / of an aluminum pot, and a hank of acrylic fur / to knot around my aching throat. The icicles of my flag …
It hasn’t rained in 6 weeks & my jaw is so tight, it clicks / like my mother’s heels in the early morning kitchen every / time I try to talk. Indy & summertime’s disreputable shimmer / of salt …
We ran Carriage House East / nonstop like a bunch of hungry mouths— / in jacking-jawing & ravenous orbits— / & the huffing in the throat stack / & double-ply knee cracks as we slid / Toughskin …
