New World Writing Quarterly

The woman has walked this path cir­cling the reser­voir many times. She stays in a sim­ple but stur­dy cab­in near the base of the moun­tain when she’s up from the city. Today feels like autumn, and when she pulled into the park­ing lot off the high­way, –more

I am writ­ing about a man. When I check in on him, he is stand­ing under an old-timey sign that reads LIQUOR. I won­der if he should wear his hair long, and then sud­den­ly he does. He wears a suit and has a dim­pled cheek.

He goes to the desert and strums –more

I am in a state of dis­ap­pear­ance, back inside Ohio. I drove all night. The car stalled before I could ram it through the perime­ter fence. The Great Lakes have been cor­doned off. The last of the world’s drink­able water. I can­not see it through the –more

The Mark IV sits behind and just to the right of the Lodge Pin Hotel. I’m in the park­ing lot between the two, sway­ing a step to the right and then a step to the left. It’s nice the way alcohol’s been work­ing on me faster since I went back to –more

Four friends and co-work­ers, Jenny, Elissa, Mira, and Fran, are sup­posed to attend an impor­tant con­fer­ence, which takes place in a town rough­ly a three-hour dri­ving dis­tance from where they live. To save on gas mon­ey, they nat­u­ral­ly decide to ride –more

1.

Eddie sat down first. He had his legs straight out and his elbows down. He low­ered the rest of his body and felt the mois­ture from the grass through the back of his shirt. A box of cig­a­rettes was passed around. I didn’t take one. Voices approached –more

A young father returns from the yard. He has plant­ed two new pep­per bush­es, to replace the ones wast­ed by flood­wa­ters. His spade unearthed a bone, a dirty thing that resem­bled a knuck­le. With his liv­ing bones, he han­dles the tiny exhuma­tion, inspects –more

I yearn for a scrap of good news
Like the city longs for tulips
To final­ly raise their mag­nif­i­cent faces to the sun,
Shining and twirling like beau­ty queens

With blind­ing, con­ceit­ed smiles.
They know how much we need them.
They can see the –more

The Bastard and the Bishop

Most of the city is underground—that’s how cold it is here, great gal­leries, com­plex, rein­forced earth­en walls, apart­ments tiered four lev­els down, some­times five—the under­ground riv­er bisect­ing the city, lit blue or –more

We shared DNA on a veg­etable pork roll in the Metropolitan muse­um café. I washed it down with two Prelief. He inquired what was up with the pills. I didn’t both­er to explain; he doesn’t have empa­thy for the sick. I’d seen a vio­let bump toe in –more

Tired from shop­ping at the mall, my purse get­ting heavy, I took a rest on a new sofa near the up esca­la­tor.  A woman engaged with her smart­phone sat at the oth­er end, speak­ing loud enough that I couldn’t ignore her side of the con­ver­sa­tion.  She –more

Half Whole

His first Volkswagen was very beachy, its paint job fad­ed blue almost to white, the inte­ri­or stripped to bones. We had sex in the mid­dle of the night in the fal­low lot between ranch hous­es. I was always under­neath on the weedy ground. I dat­ed –more

So you ask, “How could any­one so drop-dead gor­geous be afraid of mirrors?”

I was like, I’m only sev­en­teen and my face is a mine­field of pim­ples (well, maybe only one big one) and my cheeks are this sucky red, almost like a rash. All I could think –more

On the way home from the phar­ma­cy, we dri­ve through the shad­ow of the leg­endary col­lege foot­ball sta­di­um. Our son twists in his car seat for a bet­ter view of the mas­sive bronze stat­ues of players—glorious, mus­cu­lar, hel­met­less young men, run­ning –more

      after Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Conjurer”

Useless glass­es perched on his nose,
The thief gazes sky­ward in false supplication
As he grabs the dan­gling purse.

The globe win­dow above
His head seems to tilt in a sea­son­al nod
To what’s –more

She watch­es him remove her clothes from hooks, fold them into a suit­case. The tapi­o­ca he brought from the gal­ley, same beige as the plas­tic bowl, same as the paint on the dorm walls, still untouched on the sill of the win­dow she now looks out. Below, –more

The flies have invad­ed our coun­try. They move, through the sky, as a mob, bunched togeth­er like plump dark grapes, black buzzing clouds so large they block the sun. Some mass­es are bal­loon size, but more often larg­er, the size of build­ings. They gath­er –more

GREATNESS AT TWO IN THE MORNING

Writing a poem in the bathroom
of an excep­tion­al­ly small Paris apartment,
so as not to wake my wife who’s sleeping
well enough for us both.

A poem of no gen­er­al or particular
significance—which means it has a –more

Pete and Marg next door called emer­gency ser­vices because the bot­tom of their gar­den has fall­en into the arroyo. “It’s all this heavy rain,” they say, over and over.

The lights and sirens arrive as I fin­ish in the bath­room. I’ve passed the embryo, –more