Excerpts
Coming To: A Lexicology of Fainting
1. vein From Old French veine, from Latin vena. The earliest senses were blood vessel and small natural underground channel of water. See also: blood, artery, channel, the channeling of the dead. It’s a wake, we are told, my cousin and I, but we hear it like one word: awake. Who is doing the waking? …
Origin
That evening, while the pasta boiled,the man said to the woman “Let them be white . . .” And as though the earthrumbled and shook—or rather grew from inside a slate of nothing,three gold-skinned balls spun into the air and broke open: many years later,when my arms and legs turned solid and …
Lost and Found
Falling into step with the boy, Thisman draws close and whispers in a voice only for him. Says, “I wish I had a little boy just like you. I wish you were my own,” and the boy believes it, every single word. He is lost, but not in the way he has been taught to …
Pie and Whiskey
I love Connie to death, really I do, but sometimes she takes things too far. Other times she won’t take things far enough, depending on the thing at hand, but mostly it’s too far she takes everything else. Her cold remedy includes a pound and a half of raw beef tenderloin, eight to twelve shots …
High Heaven
for Rosalee He who loves gives a hostage to fortune.] –Friedrich Nietzsche Another stinking diaper to thankGod for, why we traveled all the way to Bethlehem,Alabama, to get this,slept in a crummy motel for a month waitingfor her to be born, mud-wrestled every bureaucratin the state, pressing inky fingers on every pieceof paper they …
Carmen
after Catullus Late snow today, and flower bulbsare already sending their fat shoots upthrough wet mulch along the sidewalk.Sparrows flit through the bushes,taunting me with their song of spring.I imagine how one would fit so perfectlyin the palm of my hand, how warmit would be. I’m tempted to believethe lies these birds sing, but I …
My New Friend
In a photograph, her father’s capis jaunty, his beard wild. A hooded falcon poses on his outstretched handand he is everything you want your father to be. My new friend doesn’t wear makeup.Her feet are tiny, tattooed. She’s broke, but spent a whole summer drivingthe craggy roads of Iceland. She says that in Reykjavík, they …
The way I always pictured ritual sacrifices
I wondered which would give in first,the old man carrying his fern or the ferncarried to the street the way I alwayspictured ritual sacrifices. Knees bent,he hunched above the curb long enoughfor the patience of gods to wear thin,taking in the uncertain abyss backing upthe storm drain and flooding the streetinches thick with muck. It …
Because you forgot me, I am weird in the world
Already I’ve changed—wallflower, paper flower,hidden and pressed. My mouth a thin-slotteddoor, an opening in the brush. Find the spoton my neck where the evil eye can leer unhindered. The forest crowds around meto stare, blank-eyed, free of conscience,those eyes see what I’ve become: a bride’snarrow fingers, my hair a bereft knot looking for solace. I …