Poetry
Top Ten Signs of Climate Change
1. My father tells a story of a severe winter that lingered through March: The earth shook; my cousin was swept away by a tidal wave. That winter, my father dug up a frozen sewer main by hand to unthaw it. Fishermen had a good salmon catch that year. 2. I inhale too many mosquitoes …
Uncensored
for Redd Foxx Sometimes I dream of a solar eclipse in my eyes I have grown too weary of the naked eye and its weaknesses in the light beyond gentle reflections and their sensitive images there are darker hues sinister colors and obscene visions I want to wield to drink spirits and howl blasphemies to …
Fragment: After Ida
In the black and white Polish filmin which the beautiful localplays the nun. In Warsaw,she meets her aunt, once powerful,now alcoholic, who directs her to hertrue past. I am struggling with understandingunsure which past is mine.In the film in the scenewhere the actress wears her deadaunt’s dresses and heelsafter the aunt has killed herself.I am …
Anodyne
I Just north of Ward, South Carolina,the pong of the paper mill writhesthe air southward, across the orchards, all the wayto Johnston,where creeks coil through their motions;small seeps carry through ditchesto and from my father’s pond, where catfish rippleacross the bottom, stir updelicate skeletons of their forebears. A stray dog,wolflike, with a snout long and …
Comptrollers
Morning after the twentieth anniversary of environemental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa's murder Did you just say why do the heathens rage? My head is a woven reed of traffic lawsbut my legs on the pedals seem to be sayingtoday is not the day. Perched as I am on this wheel, slantingthrough the streets like a swift …
Crush
Why do they call it ‘‘crush’’?The man strapped in horizontal on the hydraulic lift, then tipped vertical,bellowing, I am standing up. The nurses trying to cantileverhim into the bathroom so he can brush his teeth.Greg described my dad’s menu as ‘‘mechanically softened.’’They actually take the entire rib-eye steak, or chicken parmigiana,and put it through a …
Bees, Honeycombs, Honey
Bees, thousands and thousands,surviving in a hiveunder the soffit; bees,honeycombs, and honey,and dampness, and old woodsticky in the sunlight; and the beekeeper’s hand,carefully, and slowly,vacuuming, and taking;the bees tumbling, gently,into the makeshift hive;honeybees, and honeycombs, and honey, glistening;honey, the only foodthat will not spoil; honey,pulled from the pyramids,still sticky, and sweet,thousands of years later; I …
Garter, Copper, Water
He’s my age, and for once in Wise, VirginiaI believe it: same confused complexion(baby pimples nose and chin,around the eyes first fine contrails scratchingvacant sky), same dislike to sitwhile others stand. Same no gold band.He’s clean: I like the way he preened todaybefore clinic, though he circles usmost warm days in oily T-shirts, mowingour field, …
In the Name of the Tongue
Come Sunday afternoon and I sat back hunchedin the car, thumbing my father’s Bible, the door slamming behind him, as though his gun had burst a nest of birds.I fingered the grime into my hair and sat rehearsing, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witnessThou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, my …