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
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
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
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
When I was five, I was content sitting in my wheelchair at my grandparent’s dining table, splashing with my “piano hands” (as my grandma called them) in a cake pan filled with water. Only my action figures could drown in two inches of water. If I fell over my head would not sink as deep … Continue reading
Like Beethoven’s motive in Moonlight Sonata, asphyxiation is a common theme in my life. I’ve suffered pneumonia twice, an ailment no one should know how to spell before 8th grade, hospitalized both cases. I’ve fought bronchitis numerous times after my scoliosis surgery to correct the 90 degree curvature of my spine. A concept no one … Continue reading
I wanted to be a vet, said the phlebotomist when I asked if she always dreamed of drawing human blood: like a Pollock of phlebotomy existed. Animals make better patients, she continued, they don’t cry, while scratching around in a drawer for the butterfly needle needed to perform my venipuncture, since neuromuscular diseases cause muscles … Continue reading
I thought when everyone died I would be released, but it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Honey is sweet, but it still takes work to coax it from the comb. Love is like that, too, though good luck convincing it back into the jar when the stickiness finally gets you down and no … Continue reading
As boys we knew the creeks so well that once a choice was made to fish, we’d almost run each other over crossing the lots to take the best spot, downstream, maybe, from some snag, in the trash around a falling willow, or in the swirl beneath the shadow of a rock. It wasn’t that … Continue reading
It’s Paxil, she says. Take it with bourbon. Better yet, find a shrinkâa wise one. She wants me to swallow whatever I need to fill my hills and valleys in, and her GP’s flat happy to write paper for whatever you want to try. But I worry that pills will turn me into someplace else … Continue reading
Coe Review 