New World Writing Quarterly

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the low­est, how severe is your pain now?” the boun­cy young med­ical assis­tant asks with mis­placed enthu­si­asm. Fifty-eight friends on Facebook offer their thoughts and prayers. But just –more

It is on Sundays that I have a chance to lunch with George. If I don’t count the ran­dom vis­its from my agent, then for the rest of the week I am all alone. Only on this day, George is com­plete­ly free and tru­ly will­ing to –more

Self-Portrait as an Absent Person Who’s Not Even Here

I’m not in trouble
or anything,
I’m putting on some eye­shad­ow and pulling the shad­ows over my eyes,
pulling up my hoodie,
pulling back my hair
to get it out of the way:
absence isn’t just turn­ing away or being –more

She liked the feel of it—dirt—warm under bare feet in the gar­den, though it wasn’t hers, it was the neighbor’s dirt. The woman had no gar­den of her own—no car­rots, no let­tuce, no pep­pers, pota­toes, onions, toma­toes. –more

Nanna has a blue bruise across the left side of her face. It is drain­ing now, there are splotch­es of pur­ple on her neck. On her head an egg-shaped lump, still no scab. Three bro­ken ribs, a frac­tured shoul­der. If we do not –more

My wife and I bought a house, an old Dutch colo­nial with a hand­ful of dormer win­dows and a stur­dy gam­brel roof. These were words I had nev­er heard before and didn’t know the mean­ing of, despite spend­ing the last thir­teen –more

Gum-ball Jump*

Racing to the gum­ball machine
it came crash­ing down
its glass dome cracked
like Humpty Dumpty
spilling four pounds of rainbow
brains, red yel­low orange green
black and white stampeding
down the side­walk,
–more

In the Summer of his 72nd year, ill­ness came for the famed archi­tect D.B. Welk in the form of bone can­cer. It was said to have reached the mar­row. For six­teen years, Welk had lived on the west end of Oak Island, North Carolina –more

Terms and Conditions Apply

The evening’s wind­ing down
and for hours now the passerines

have been out of their trees,

per­haps some glob­al event
has added to their miniseries,

or pos­si­bly just a cat,

pos­si­bly the retort
of a ram­bunc­tious muffler,

or was that the neigh­bor’s child upstairs
–more

Descended from Peacelords

Some lah-di-dah grandees
are descend­ed from
famous warlords
and like to tell you
about their butch escutcheons

the pow­er of the past

where­as I

to the best of my knowledge

come from a long line
of peacelords

peo­ple who led drudg­ing lives
not armies

who want­ed –more

The Only Ones Left in the World

First Months

..
It was win­ter and snow­ing hard. I was dri­ving to get the oil changed but came to a church. I went inside but at the Eucharist felt too alone and had to leave. I’d left the car run­ning, and the pine mir­ror, which I’d refin­ished years ago, –more

I know there will be trou­ble. I don’t want the sil­ver fin­ger bowls. I want the gold Limoges plates. The gold paint will flake off with use. But they are exquis­ite and I will love them and use them and they will nev­er see the inside of a dish­wash­er. –more

My mom lugs the Nutribullet to the curb. I trail behind her, bare­foot, with the blender’s var­i­ous accou­ter­ments. I pick hard­ened straw­ber­ry smooth­ie bits from the rim. She sets the Nutribullet down in the patch of grass between the side­walk and the –more

Roof

Rooftop par­ty at our house, drinks, famil­iar guests, view of the sun­set, but Case strays from the group, strides to the east across the flat white roof, stops close to the knee-high rail. My friend Gaspar, like me, takes notice of his move­ment, and –more

Once I offered a poem that con­tained the phrase “mist shim­mers” to a table full of peo­ple. One man said, Mist can’t shim­mer. Fog shim­mers.  Mist drifts. His name was Paul. I said noth­ing but thought many things. Paul had dark bangs –more

Bali in August was way hot­ter than I’d planned for. The bag­gage claim was out­side. A backpacker—could have been thir­ty and shaved his scalp or fifty and bald for real—lifted my pack off the rotate‑y thing. He said things like, “ … George,” –more

I spent my late teens dust­ing antacid bot­tles and con­dom box­es (quick­ly, before the boss could crack a dirty joke) in a strip mall drug­store. I filled out hun­dreds of Medicaid reim­burse­ment forms by hand, space by space.

I watched my mid­dle-aged cowork­er –more