Poetry |
“Aubade with Elsewhere & All,”
“a fluted / glass bottle stamped MILWAUKEE, / the glossed square of a magazine page, / which, unfolded, reveals Kathy Ireland / in a green bikini. With both hands the boy / closes — he nearly trembles — the rust-bitten / lid …”
Poetry |
“Renewal” & “Bouquet”
“I’ve got nothing better to do / than wait for the recycle truck / so I can reclaim my barrel –– blue, / taller than a first grader, full.”
Literature in Translation |
from Mammoth
“About an hour later, a woman strolled in wearing a mink coat, her hair wavy from sleeping in rollers. An old man in a beret clung to the crook of her arm. For whatever reason, I glanced at the barman, and he gave a calm nod.”
Poetry |
“September Equinox”
“Let’s rename all our bones, he says, let’s fuse our skeletons together. Let’s become one whole new creature. And so, the old name was wrist. The new name is narrow. The old name was hip. The new name is sparrow.”
Poetry |
“Post-Mortem”
“I’ve never wanted my own body, never valued it. / To cut is proper, to forget, divine. // Mittens stippled with snow. Runners of a sled. / Tracks of a child’s destiny.”
Fiction |
“Toads Down Deep in the Loam”
“On the morning of his first day of school, Henry pours the water out of his thermos when his father isn’t looking and slips a toad inside. He leaves the lid loose so it can breathe and finds a cricket in the yard so it has lunch.”
Poetry |
“In Search of Eden at the New York Botanical Garden” & “Objective Correlative”
“In the leaflet, I read of Kusama’s love of nature. Think of Aristotle declaring art as imitation / of nature, think of artifice. // In the native plant section, my friend Dominic introduces me to the flora and foliage by name. / I follow his eye like a monarch butterfly skimming the goldenrod.”
Poetry |
“Hell’s Half Acre”
“I almost missed the sign which, along with chain / link fencing, was all that set the place apart from the miles / we’d already driven. So much spectacular // sameness begins to numb a person.”
Poetry |
“The Silence”
“All were denounced / as party pariahs & traitors / & the White House attorney // said in public that one / ‘should be shot.'”
Literature in Translation |
from Dendrites
“Nine years ago Leto was still a toddler—how old was she then, two? three?—yes, she’d just turned three when the fires broke out and the whole city burned for three days and nights, for three days and nights stores and houses were looted, the smoke seemed to trap and incite unspoken fears …”
Poetry |
“Dido Sotiriou Says Farewell Anatolia, Over and Again”
“Let’s say two million Greeks were never expelled / from Asia Minor. That her protagonist, Axiotis Manolis, // could stay in Turkey and quietly farm / what he was certain would be his small plot // of everlasting life …”
Poetry |
“How I Know We Come From Oceans” & “You Have to Swallow the World”
“But the world is hard, weighted / by concrete, sharp with bayonets / and belfries, in each bite, shards.”
Fiction |
“The Cards”
“The request for more money came through email early one morning, before Jeff was out of bed. Mark had just made a pot of coffee when his phone pinged. Chelsea’s mother is requesting an extra $1,200 for supplies to support her pregnancy …”
Poetry |
“Crown Shyness”
“We approached some fragile union, / but it could not be sustained. You threatened secrets / I already knew. You missed the house wren’s song / because you kept talking.”
Poetry |
“Outside the Maximum-Security at Dannemora” & “Calendar”
“Women hunch over bags / of candy, soap, gallons of soda / and kids — / all they’ll carry inside. // Wet sneakers slide / through slush, / devoted, slow.”