New World Writing Quarterly

IT’S ONLY A QUEEN-SIZED BED

It’s only a queen-sized bed and I’m sleep­ing on the right-hand ledge because you broke your wrist when you fell with your arm out­stretched on the con­crete skirt of our neighbor’s pool and it rests in a splint on a –more

I’m sor­ry if this poem hurts
and here is a piece of ster­ile gauze

to bite down on
if it caus­es pain.

You say, by email, that Miriam’s son
came through his surgery fine

though there were a few hours after that
his pain meds did not kick in.

He’s in –more

Spolia

What remains for me: your books, war
relics, and pho­to albums.

With your books, you were quiet.
Trawling their depths
for under­lined pas­sages, marginalia,
I found only the cold
Victorian inscrip­tion from your father:

Many of my sen­ti­ments are –more

My cousin Sid Morrow told me he’d wok­en up, just yes­ter­day, from a dream that showed him how to get into a triple-locked box with­out ever open­ing it. To con­vince me, Sid said that he’d bought a crate, locked it, tied rope –more

They taught me the col­ors of the enemy

They taught me the col­ors of the enemy.
On a map they are red, and we are black.
Our uni­forms, of course, were camouflaged,
some­times the mixed col­ors of a forest,
some­times the mixed col­ors –more

24.

The world has gone dark. No one reach­ing out to me from out­side the sphere or the great beyond. Just silence. I check the anten­nae and satel­lites. I check all the wires. Everything seems more or less in line with how it –more

Poem Following a Line from Philip Larkin

On the day of the explo­sion, cows
kept chew­ing and we went to work,
cough­ing out dis­may in pro­sa­ic bursts
and scrolling news, weigh­ing the chance
of an ear­ly win­ter. On the morn­ing
–more

Six hours alto­geth­er. Rp300k taxi fare; 10k was return on the train.

We had cho­sen the date bad­ly. Muslim New Year and a long week­end meant a queue at the sta­tion tick­et-office, seats sold out. The stand­ing option was declined; –more

1. More Days Than Nights

 Tiresias sits alone chew­ing gum like Lolita. Her dog, Little St. James, sleeps on her lap. Even though her implants are hurt­ing, she sol­diers on and will tease the dis­as­ter out of the moment.  The oth­er pas­sen­gers have –more

Treasures

You are eight when on a vis­it to your father’s aunt you see beau­ti­ful things. Great Aunt lives alone in a tiny red cab­in on the edge of a small town. Before her hus­band died, he built shelves through­out to dis­play –more

We would come to blows we got so bored. On bulk pick­up day, we rum­maged the tree lawns and the alleys. We plucked a water­logged gui­tar. It had two rust­ed strings that broke. We snapped them against our wrists until we broke –more

1

Outside the kitchen win­dow, the wind is whip­ping, jostling the tree branch­es with a vig­or I haven’t seen for a while. So of course I have to stop wash­ing the dish­es and dri­ve to the hill­top park.

Standing on the grassy peak, I avail –more

Roundabout

Mike looks at me like I make him sick. I may have done some­thing to make him mad, but I can’t remem­ber what. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, or maybe he wants me to believe I deserve to be scorned with his eyes. –more

In the Price Chopper, and I am about to grab a can of Niblets, quick Thursday din­ner, when Dow, who is teach­ing Bio this semes­ter, sneaks up behind me. There is all kinds of Phil Collins around us in the air, and Dow is his usu­al sweat on his upper –more

A trop­i­cal storm had formed some­where off the coast and was fore­cast­ed to turn into a hur­ri­cane, so we cut our vaca­tion short and drove home in silence. My wife Kate caught me hav­ing eyes for oth­er women at the beach. I had for­got­ten my –more

Hats

I got fired from my job at CVS for steal­ing Prilosec OTC to alle­vi­ate the hor­ren­dous side-effects of my chron­ic GERD, so I start­ed buy­ing nov­el­ty base­ball hats from China and sell­ing them on the side­walk in front of my apart­ment build­ing. My girl­friend –more

1. VR with 360, with immer­sion, with imme­di­a­cy: it is the ulti­mate empa­thy machine says one practitioner/promoter. Thing is, the writer in Art Forum argues, it’s empa­thy for your­self, in your­self, with your­self. VR is stuck in its vivid­ness –more

The Clip

You have just buried your sec­ond dog. The after­noon is get­ting sticky. You put the spade back in the garage, kick off the boots and pour your­self two fin­gers of Gordon’s. You sit down and lis­ten to the neighbor’s guard –more

I @mentioned Yang in our WeChat group chat at eight AM my time and PM their time, telling her I dreamed of her being a North Korean spy. In my dream she was only revealed as being from North Korea, –more

(René Taïcon: 1930 Archives départ­men­tales Pas-de-Calais 4Z482 Sous-pre­fec­ture de Saint-Omer, France) 

My moth­er was Fridolin, a boy of four­teen. He pushed me for­ward in the soup line, and dealt –more