Flyover Girl
A wild onion in a red dress
on the Blue Line, en route
to a party where I wallflowered
in place for three hours, while
the whole room revolved around me
as I watched my squad
shed mermaid scales
to become sashimi.
We were nonnative
People will tell you that anniversaries are hard, as are the “firsts”—the first Christmas, the first concert, the first holiday. You can brace yourself for those. You know they’re coming.
Grief isn’t just in the big things, or the obvious.
The Flower Monger
The local news informs me this morning that they found his lifeless body curled beneath a multi-colored blanket of flowers lying atop a steaming grate outside the Capitol Building after the coldest night of the year. Over the years
Wherever You Are
A city changes you
after a decade or so, and when
you return, even a year later,
the city’s moved on, changing
new people in its time,
its place. Very rarely,
a stone midnight,
They were in my mother’s garage, packed into a cardboard box and left to the nuclear heat of Florida, the bugs, storms, and humidity. How long have they been in here? I asked my mother, and she said, Must be about two years since he
Self-Portrait as the Fool
I’ve got one foot dangling off a cliff while the other is dripping bells from the ankle. I wear parti-colored harlequins & say the truest thing. Careful, it might be tinged nasty, though no one listens to insights when
from Fingerling Lakes
Lab
The Bio teacher’s
stepped out for a cigarette
when Fen recoils
from the tarnished tray
and says she won’t
dissect the fetal pig
This body has been
rendered unto the Lord
and we do Him injury
to break its vessel
Sylvia’s unimpressed
He jumps and sings
with hospital alarm
and then leans on my shoulder
as he begs me
to wipe away his tears.
He tries to mouth
the word, purple,
then points to the sun,
as if he wants to prowl
to the end of the rainbow.
He wrecks
the TV, the lights,
Polaroid
We’ve gone through the rooms together, assigned
this keepsake and that. Who knows what
we’ve missed, or overlooked, what’s lost
or forgotten, but at least I found the shoebox
stuffed with old photos. It has something
Entrance
When it’s time to enter
I’m standing in line
standing and waiting in line
I don’t even know if I’m entering
or waiting to enter
is it easier to enter
when you don’t even know
if you are?
Absurdery
Once upon this time, in a country far away, the ruler was very
old. The red hats had begun to dolly him to the podium,
his jacket flapping, at first with the curtain closed. He enjoyed
the ride, the breeze of it, like a tilting Segway.
Four years ago, following a a fairly brutal two-year battle with cancer, my mother died; a relief, in the end, though it still doesn’t feel so. Some deep-lying tumour in the breast missed by the usual mammograms and only caught after it had already
1
The Wise Woman of Elety was taking her young grandson along on a boat trip to Joramca, the island of flowers. This was the peak season for the rarest blooms. Though she wasn’t sure they would interest him, she thought she’d take a chance. She
FORGOTTEN WHEELS
Abandoned shopping carts
roll like patients in a hospital.
Wheels frozen, spinning in puddles,
carrying the bags of
midnight customers,
groceries for families
living in burning buildings.
Footsteps echo in the
parking lot,
walking
LATE NIGHT, WYOMING, 1972
Ten days out of high school I was on a Greyhound headed west with John K. It was his idea to ride buses and hitchhike to California or until our money ran out. I’d been trying to decide what to do with my life, maybe go to
1. Elastic Band
She found a thick blue elastic band, frayed and crumbling around the edges, wrapped around a jar of hairclips. It had once wound around the gai-lan stem from Chinatown. She was six. The wet scent of the vegetables and soy filled
The first day of fall quarter I meet the young man who will kill me. Dressed in black, the stone-faced boy stomps past me to the back of the classroom. He smirks a challenge, snorting at the sharing of pronouns. I hope he’ll drop the class, but he
The AI Wishes It Was a Plough
or a screwdriver, a toothbrush, a spatula—anything
without electricity or moving parts. Even a stapler
would be too much. Even a pair of scissors, a paper
clip. The AI yearns, naturally, for a pure simplicity
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photograph, Sea of Japan, Hokkaido, frames the horizon dead center – wisps of gray clouds above slate and onyx ripples. It’s neither night nor day. I asked my son what he remembered about our trip to Japan. He was