my body hurts and i’m not sure but i think my shirt smells like smoke – i don’t know why. i want to live behind a clock in a train station, like the boy in that story that i have never read. i want to live in the ocean, down amongst all the dark and … Continue reading
For John, on his 25th When the birds start at it, and light comes on at 5, it is impossible not to wake, not to meander around the early house only noting pots of coffee, trash cans, cats let out, in, the peonies in tawdry bloom, dozens crashed over on their stems with no one … Continue reading
July light bums through its blue blanket of sky. I spend the day plumping up the dog bed, comforting Simon. He pads from corner to corner, and from time to time, yelps out in excruciating pain that bolts through his body. Then I kneel down on the floor and rub his long brown ears. With … Continue reading
I sit with my back against a cool wall the last dancer has gone leaving pleasant, unsettled air from the cuff of movement and strains of music that linger through a sleeve of silence remaining footprints bid me to cover them before they fade with my own one more time Continue reading
You notice when I tie my hands down, keep them from floating untethered, I rock in my seat, chew on ideas, hum because I’ve always wanted a theme song. May You say you like things single-spaced, because then the words don’t seem so formal, because then they swim when you squint, and they look like … Continue reading
Everyone played higher than each other. Notes lithe as wires, tuning sharp entanglements, preludes above the living room air. Father, grandmother, great-aunt Susannah, junior Tilman, weddings, anniversaries, funerals. High C’s turned themselves inside out, trapezes, somersaults through some fly-by stratosphere of their own. Lemon twists, spangles, circus dust. Hands that streamline the shore after the … Continue reading
Love at his fingertips, love swaying beneath his feet if he’d only loosen his hands and turn into the wash of pure wind. The slipstream along his skin numb with desire from the street below, people holding out their hands. Let the compass flex behind his back and the low clouds bend the rooftops over … Continue reading
The lineage of honeysuckle scatters the lowlife weeds with their quick little bows, resonant brown leaves, into toadies, footmen for every turn of the wind. The porch leans over and through the honeysuckle for its few astringent breaths beyond the sweetness. I’d love a rocker of honeysuckles for my next birthday, my eightieth, settling in, … Continue reading
Tilkut prepared for the whale hunt, fasting on fern roots and wild lily bulbs, purifying himself in the sweat lodge. On the fifth night of prayer and fasting, Tilkut invoked the spirit of the whale. He danced like a pine bough in a gentle wind. Sage is burned. A haunting song began: Salmon crooned in … Continue reading
My grandmother is in the backyard feeding the deer that file like ghosts up from the stream, cold, cold, where Marybelle drowned herself in the spring of eighty-one, a little tetched, where sassafras leaves like mittened hands hold the thrashing air until it quiets down and slides under the surface, where carefree water striders float, … Continue reading
Coe Review 