New World Writing Quarterly

On hearing of her pregnancy long ago

Sifting through memen­tos that include his only pho­to of her, sea­son­ing yet anoth­er review of pathos, he comes across his long-dis­used P.O. Box num­ber, recalls writ­ing it auto­mat­i­cal­ly on the self-addressed enve­lope with the let­ter post­ed three months –more

A shirt­less man sits next to me in the grass, glis­ten­ing with sweat. Tattooed wings shim­mer across his back; not angel wings but bat wings, hun­dreds of them, a cave at night, and when the man turns to me, he’s cry­ing. He’s not real­ly crying–the –more

There exists a deeply root­ed need to name and to be named. Since ancient times, humans have felt com­pelled to name things. At age three, I named my stuffed tiger Sheetha. At five, I named my black-haired doll with amber eyes Diarrhea. Not know­ing it’s –more

The jin­gle bells tied to the door jin­gle, clank, rat­tle, and then set­tle, as we push our way inside and take our place in line. The fog up from the ocean across the street stays on the oth­er side of the door, con­tent to wait, to swal­low us back up –more

Red cov­er, 9 by 12, one hun­dred per cent rag. She was good at art, the nuns said, and she walked home from school with her water­col­or pic­ture of the church tow­er, the out­line of the bell vis­i­ble in the shad­owy win­dow. (On the cor­ner the drug­store where –more

There was a require­ment but no one would tell you what it was. At first you were con­fi­dent you would fig­ure it out. Now you spend every wak­ing moment searching—desperate!—and every night plead­ing with what­ev­er forces might be gath­ered in the shad­owed –more

The very night Suffolk Aquatics wins dis­trict and Kev Drupperman tries to touch my boob, the Kavishnicks (Poppa, Momma, and me)—attempt to out­run bad cred­it (and gen­er­al loser­dom) and expa­tri­ate from New York to Rasthole Flats, Alabama.

First, some –more

This Shouldn’t Happen to Anyone

It is hail­ing. I hide in the snow, pre­tend­ing to be a whale or an ele­phant in a far­away room. I was once a part of you, a dan­gling fin­ger, some­thing scowl­ing in a sock or under­wear. You can’t get rid of me that eas­i­ly. I’m grow­ing hair, wait­ing, –more

This ear­ly, as he pass­es the lla­ma, camel, goats, Shep imag­ines them as feed for Jaco, who’s camped in the back, clos­est to the riv­er, his own pri­vate lion. Jaco’s gold­en eyes catch the dawn like news­pa­per does a match. Shep sets down the buck­et –more

The Godfather, 1972

Our ances­tors came from the wrong coun­try. Our pride was mis­placed. The well-thumbed  mass mar­ket­ed paper­back would yel­low with age and then the sil­ver screen would explode. These were domains of great influ­ence ripe for exploita­tion and mythol­o­gy. –more

Dement

Please close the door and have a seat, Mr. Dement. I real­ize I’m inter­rupt­ing your work­flow and your ongo­ing men­tal nar­ra­tive by tak­ing this time to speak to you. I can near­ly always tell by the sneer­ing look on your face that you enter­tain your­self –more

Mouths

My old friends the Pembrokes
are mad because I called
their moth­er humane,
as opposed to kind in a poem
I didn’t remem­ber writing,
a poem I shouldn’t have
remem­bered to write.

*

I meet them for lunch to explain myself,
then we go back to their –more

Every June for forty-sev­en years…The black rotary phone rang, and my moth­er rocked the cra­dle. Her liq­uid voice stopped me cold. You hanged your­self in your bed­room in your mama’s house. Except Mama lied. Said you’d used a gun. Believed the lie –more

The lights to the Ambassador Bridge turn on and Reggie looks up.

“You know, that’s the busiest bridge in North America,” he says.

“Really?” I ask.

“Yup. It’s owned by some bil­lion­aire. Half of every­thing going in and out of Canada runs across –more

When I first learned of The Count, though he’s not a clas­sic Dracula type, it creeped me out that he exist­ed, that we came from the same place, and that we had this one behav­ior, this secret thing, in common.

It hap­pened at the call cen­ter on a reg­u­lar –more

CINEMA

I felt like see­ing a movie one day, and I went, and there were, on the screen, demon­stra­tions of joy and abject suf­fer­ing, the faces huge, like moons. I was cov­ered in feel­ing. I took my place in a crowd of strangers leav­ing the dark­ness, and the light, –more

Lena was learn­ing not to blink. She had spent her whole life blink­ing and look at what she lost.

While her eyes were closed, even for that split sec­ond, hun­dreds of far-away peo­ple died, rivers over­flowed, and love, well, love dis­ap­pears before you –more