Yours, honey, were so perfect, a little rosebud mouth, not those puffed up blubbery things, my mother says when I pointed out the models’ collagen petals. “Roses,” my mother always says, “that’s what yours were, a nice tiny nose. That’s from you father. One good thing. Not a big ugly one like I’ve got.” I … Continue reading
Sometimes I stand inebriated by every small thing– swaying to little blue flowers on the side of a long stretch of highway in spring, or eyes trying desperately not to buzz at the pastel scent of laundry snapping time to jazz on the backyard clothesline. I belly up to the bar of pine and order … Continue reading
The smell of black soil drifts with every handful warms my palms I sift it through my fingers and listen to soft sounds of falling prairie grasses burned by raging fires, of buffalo bodies left to rot in the summer sun, and of the foreign loam brought here on high blown currents Continue reading
I attempt to cook today. Chop onions and tomatoes, stir rice measured by the cup of my palm into hot oil. I sprinkle cumin seed liberally across the surface and see my mother’s hands. My mother’s hands pinch salt into the pan, add water, do not stir. I’ve never been able to make my mother’s … 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
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
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
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
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
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
Coe Review 