I. A first kiss, on a fouton smudged blue by broken pens. A night I’ve craved for fortnights is lengthened by carbon dioxide held against its will, only to moisten foreign lips. During Ravel’s left-handed concerto I hold her hand meditatively, mindfully aware, and each pulse brokers torrents of a resolution, of the distant ticks … Continue reading
is what you notice first, a fleet of wheelchairs adrift below the waist of the horizon, lost ships in a sea of dementia, the grey-tiled ceiling pressing down, down like pea soup fog, zero visibility in a lost world. They are the derelicts washed up on unfamiliar shores, sea and storm-battered hull slats, once sea-worthy, … Continue reading
Nothing more could be done, so on a bright desert morning they came. Your home, existential oasis, where you intended to stay to the very last, the trailer with its “gate to nowhere”, plunked amid the saguaro, prickly pear and tumbleweed, where never again would you lay your head under star-studded nights. Where feral cats … Continue reading
Divided and divided again, already old, the root cellar held in the winds names, memorials upon memorials like so many afterbirths safeguarded in cellared mason jars I could not believe in the names on the stones: in memory of, beloved, dear, blessed, yes, any more than I could believe in my … Continue reading
Just look at these freaks they’re nowhere and everywhere half in love with their great hunger and stuffing themselves with succulent meals of soft white food but what do they care they don’t care about towers of silence the great perishing trees how even on the clearest days something is always blurring the sky why … Continue reading
‘I’ll come and foreclose, get your car and your clothes, Singin’ I’m jolly banker am I.’ –Woody Guthrie The odds are long, the threat is huge, And dark clouds litter the horizon While yesterday’s red meat turns bad. The smiling Shell Answer Man Is nowhere to be found, my friend, And lonely Mister Clean, singing … Continue reading
other people feel this too other people feel this mess this time this place the crush of the anvil chest comic comedic comedian on the stage of your forehead anchored by eyebrows walking within worry lines of a worry wart sorry I digress … Continue reading
Pterodactyl shoulders slumped. Patches ripped from my uniform. Sewn patches, not low class iron-ons, no sir, those patches were real for a while, until I went to prison for something I didn’t do; that’s when they sealed all my patches inside a manila envelope, my name in permanent marker across tin clips splayed like road … Continue reading
Muggy night— we can’t sleep. She gets out of bed to paint: scents of turpentine and Chanel No 5 roll me out of bed to write. We work in the same space drawn together by something funky on the radio—horns, piano, then Norah Jones. She reads over my shoulder, steals some words for her canvas, … Continue reading
She can draw a perfect cat’s eye without a mirror, her liner almost touching the waxy black of her hair, razor-parted and plastered down the middle, the dare of a crescent moon on each powdered cheek, explosive chrysanthemum at her nape, matching the flared ruffle of a dress she wears once a year. Nine at … Continue reading
Coe Review 