New World Writing Quarterly

Then he stopped want­i­ng sex. Then he stopped talk­ing much at all. At his worst he’d pace through rooms and the air would adhere and fol­low him and all the time you could feel all these thoughts going through his head—these images of syphilis and –more

One albi­no bug crawl­ing on a piece of moss.
Long antennae.
Simple legs.
It jumps, fly­ing down onto a piece of pine.
Walking across sand and grav­el. Crawls across a stick.
A dead albi­no moth –more

I fold the paper, wait­ing at the din­er. Sip my water, check my phone for the time. The guy is late: my date, who I met online. I look out the win­dow: the moon like clumps.

The paper has a pic­ture of a guy want­ed for killing some­one in the trop­ics. –more

Scream as loud­ly as you can at ran­dom times, day or night, with­out shame or apology.

Sing the music in your head with­out regard to melody or rhythm. Performing out­side announces your pres­ence and asserts your identity.

Shout “Hi, neigh­bor!” –more

A cou­ple of tall, healthy, pros­per­ous, fra­grant young Canadians, one from Winnipeg, the oth­er from Saskatoon, in my liv­ing room tonight defend­ing the idea of the week­end and their God-giv­en right to play a lit­tle club music on Friday night.

I calm­ly –more

The Witching Hour

The knock on the door came short­ly after 3. Wooden par­ti­cle board mak­ing the light rap resound, of course at that hour espe­cial­ly. In the days pri­or there had been some con­cern an illic­it arrange­ment on that side of Jakarta might not be met with a –more

Somewhat com­plex grumpiness
on the precipice of a beau­ti­ful world
in a lov­ing, mag­i­cal universe
sym­bi­ot­ic with virus­es and bacteria
Persistent, intru­sive thoughts
Chemical vir­tu­al realities
Diatribing in pub­lic
–more

The back­yard gar­den is a fenced-in pool of murky black Jell‑O that sucks and belch­es up Heather’s feet as she col­lects its mon­strous and mishap­pen pro­duce into wick­er baskets—onions the size of bowl­ing balls, car­rots bent at right angles, apples –more

She entered the tiger exhib­it as one of them; lick­ing her paws as if pricked by thorns, prowl­ing the lim­it­ed space, wait­ing for raw meat to plop down when and where it did every­day. the oth­er tigers observed her as an imposter, but the chil­dren around –more

She was half angel, half angel dust, with eyes like coal mines that could cave in any time. Wore my dirty tee shirts straight off the floor. Wrote i love the fuck out of you in pur­ple lip­stick on the cracked bath­room mir­ror; keyed when –more

Reawakening

chaos in town. a viral siege

our words are wings fly­ing across cities
you, there; me, here. us — two
worlds a/part

above, the sky thickens
like the locust swarms of March
sweep­ing through Nairobi

down here, we await it daily -
as the fig­ures roll –more

When he sowed, he’d been opti­mistic. Wow. He’d gone to the IHOP and done some seed genet­ics cal­cu­la­tions on a nap­kin. Majestic seed genet­ics cal­cu­la­tions. Now it was October and just look at that front yard. Misery. The cucur­bits could best be –more

LOVE IN TIMES OF WAR

The air glim­mers with pollen,
smog and haze. A meltdown
of the sens­es. I think of tanks
scur­ry­ing like mice across
the bor­der. Armed fiends in green
bring new mean­ing to being
a sol­dier of (mis)fortune. All
feel­ings –more

When four-year-old Doug threw his Jesus Christ orna­ment into the fire­place, every­one in the fam­i­ly jumped up at once, but his grand­moth­er Deb led the way. Deb was a retired high school English teacher with a beautician’s pos­ture and unusu­al­ly long –more

She spent hours look­ing for the per­fect sink. Farmhouse sinks with enam­el apron fronts, vin­tage cast iron with attached drain­boards, stain­less restau­rant-grade util­i­ty sinks. She want­ed a lit­tle style, she told him, a lit­tle upgrade to what had rust­ed –more

*
From the same mag­ic spell that’s not air
you lay bare two suns–a blind­ing run
before there was any life on Earth

–what fol­lows already knows
how love would work and went for it
though nobody will say where that star went

except when reach­ing out –more

It was the week­end and I rode my bike to the riv­er. Someone had set up a ramp for stunts. Kids were ramp­ing their moun­tain bikes off of the ramp and into the riv­er, leap­ing from the seat at the last minute to try and grab a large knot­ted rope that –more

(a cen­to)

The prob­lem of psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dis­tort­ed deities is an extreme­ly com­plex sub­ject, which tran­scends the lim­i­ta­tions of the present work. In the east, I could see Jupiter ris­ing, fat and blur­ry. We begin to rec­og­nize the mon­u­ments of the bour­geoisie –more

Raymond Burr, the actor who played Perry Mason, buys an island in the Republic of Fiji and calls it Nowheresville Inc.

On his island, Raymond Burr, the actor who played Ironside, rais­es orchids, cat­tle and Space Food Sticks.

Raymond Burr, whose scenes –more

my mom gave me
perfume
for my birth­day this year.

it came in late
and inside a bottle
five times smaller
than what we expected.

it didn’t even have
a spray nozzle.

sim­ply
one small stick of plastic
attached to the cap
so i would drop –more