Excerpts
A Mother Near the West Virginia Line Considers Public Health
The industry thinks I’m too dumb to back down; they don’t knowI do this for my mom and dad. They were 69 and 71. He had pulmonary fibrosis, worked with asbestos all his life. She grew upnear the coke ovens back when kids were sent into the mines to pick coal. So they both had …
Poem against Selfies
But I have so much to say! For instance, did you realizethat insects are the most diverse group of organismson the entire planet, representing approximately80% of the world’s species?That at any given timethere are an estimated 10 quintillion(10,000,000,000,000,000,000)individual insects alive,that the number of (living and dead) species of insectsis said to be, at a minimum,30 …
Shattering
The man becomes a dolphin in her dreams. Only briefly, he is a shining silver arc above her, and then, when his hips push down between her legs he’s a man again. The air is bright around him. His shoulders are rounded, his eyes closed, his mouth is open, gasping. She had thought he looked …
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 …