New World Writing Quarterly

It hap­pened in a sprawl­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry in south­ern Italy. It hap­pened in a dingy vet’s office next to a Domino’s.

Oliver slept in the front seat, curled up in his fuzzy blan­ket like a black silken hand­ker­chief tucked in –more

The Prodigy Maker

The man with no eyes and ears who tunes pianos tap-tap-taps at our door at the creaky-crack of dawn and plunks his satchel of tools down next to the spinet. His bul­bous nose glis­tens like a shim­mer­ing pond. His breath, like scram­bled –more

The girl showed up every day that spring. Black pony­tail under a back­wards black cap, car­go cut-offs to her shins, worn-out com­bat boots she swapped for Vans yanked out of an over­stuffed back­pack. Her board was old and beat to shit, but she was obvi­ous­ly –more

At first, the babysit­ter did not under­stand what the chil­dren were attempt­ing to tell her. That a man had emerged from the barn. That he had appar­ent­ly been liv­ing in the barn. That he had gone into the woods, and, not long –more

Act Now

I should have been a dolphin,
seems fair.
I should have been a loveseat,
passed from moth­er to daugh­ter to son
then chopped into kindling
to keep the tin­der com­pa­ny as it burns.
Fire where there’s father
–more

Status Report

Writing a poem feels
dan­ger­ous
again. We need to

be care­ful when
choos­ing
our words and then

we need to say them.

~

Love Song

You can see how Ptolemy
mis­un­der­stood the –more

What first gave us the idea is that Gwen was a lead in the school play, and her char­ac­ter would only love men named Ernest. So we decid­ed that for the next cal­en­dar year, Gwen would only date Alexanders (Alex count­ed), and –more

In the storm of Goodman’s life, he is always a minute from find­ing shel­ter, a tin roof, a striped awning, hell, even a tree. His life has always been a storm, all 63 years, but now with Hannah gone, he feels the bite of wind every­where he looks.

–more

People in ele­va­tors are anx­ious. This is part­ly because peo­ple in ele­va­tors are going some­where, and the ele­va­tors are not that some­where. But it is also because peo­ple in ele­va­tors are often alone in these ele­va­tors with strangers. Alone with strangers –more

Jim

When Jim plays the clar­inet, his tor­so lengthens,
his fin­gers sure on the tone holes,
on the keys. His lips warm on the reed,

he sways in a dance like the dance
I once saw on an Attic amphora,
the son of Aphrodite water­ing his

mother’s gar­den, water –more

So my big secret isn’t that I date the occa­sion­al sug­ar dad­dy or two or I go commando—all the time—the secret is I start­ed to go to church. I go not because I’ve found reli­gion, but because I have some girl crush­es. –more

Enterprise, Alabama, 1978:

The sales­man behind the glass counter hand­ed my dad a hand­writ­ten receipt and a few dol­lars, then looked down at me. “Well kid­do,” he said, “in a cou­ple of years you’ll fit into a grown-up –more

Unable to Sleep

For sev­er­al nights now he had believed him­self unable to sleep. Each morn­ing he would rise remem­ber­ing hav­ing spent the pre­vi­ous eight hours star­ing at the ceil­ing. It was unbear­able. And yet when he men­tioned –more

Last night, my brother’s heart stopped beat­ing. My broth­er will be dead for the rest of my life. He will be dead for­ev­er. I shuf­fle up the dri­ve, stop and kick the camel­lias that lit­ter the road. I kneel to pick up the blos­soms –more

Emanate

I’d had a good week. I’d gone about my busi­ness with­out run­ning into any­one I knew. No one had spo­ken to me or stared at me. When I returned home from the gro­cery store or wher­ev­er, I pushed the but­ton to low­er –more

Under the pres­sure of age and ill­ness she lost her hap­pi­ness, drag­ging her­self from room to room, the house a prison now, hers and ours. One of us had to be there because she couldn’t do what she had always done. She couldn’t do so we had to but –more