Dividing by Halves

Dividing by Halves WHOLE. “Can I lay here?” I say to a lover after I’ve done what I expect they expect Wondering if I’ll fit neatly in the space under bed If I take up any space in their pretty head Or if I’d be more agreeable at my place instead They whisper “you were… Read More

Dorothea

dorothea all of these streets like rivers of doubt and all of us lost some of us left standing alone in the room of empty chairs some of us left looking out the window squinting in the glare of sunlight on chrome or on water this man no one knows who threatens to jump who… Read More

waltz

waltz had god but it wasn’t enough had drugs which came closer got tired of growing up and then got tired of growing old sang songs that refused to bleed and i cut myself on the edges of awkward silences and no matter which way i turned the forest always opened up into the desert… Read More

Dive

dive keeps thinking about the desert about getting high about the girls he’s fucked in any number of shithole apartments finds the slight depression at the far edge of the field where the horse was buried no songs but the songs of bees the smell of lilies, of dogwood and roses, clouds like mounds of… Read More

Dream Sequence with Drained Spectres

Dream Sequence with Drained Spectres1 after Frank Bidart They first come to me in waves of lilac frost, balming the carpet until it is cold to my touch. They call me friend, so I let them stay. Soon I taste the salt. I fall into an endless pool of loden green. They lift me out,… Read More

Iteration (Sestina)

Iteration (Sestina) Three weeks to winter and I palm the curtains obsessively. I dream in varied color. I etch skin into my hands to remember what is outside. Three weeks and I fold cotton tissues into rabbits, watch the rabbits scamper away, tendrils of frost beneath my palm blooming blue as I fold into a… Read More

Channel Orange

Channel Orange after the album by Frank Ocean         I cut glass into oblong teardrops. I drape myself in pink. I am the morning running behind you, taking your shaky nightmare hands,         dragging you away from absent fluorescence. I have willed & wanted this for so long—this bleak fever dream, this fading road—the one that begins… Read More

Humorous Micro Fiction from The Arab World

Humorous Micro Fiction from The Arab World Translated from the Arabic by Essam M. Al-Jassim The Power of Persuasion By Jamaludin Al-Khoudairi – Morocco I've never seen no one like him who has the power of convincing you with an idea and its ‎opposite, as though he was the last of the scholars of Kalām,… Read More

Through the Glass Darkly

Through the Glass Darkly Wren watched the last of the late autumn light shine through the crystals hanging in the kitchen window that made a dappled kaleidoscope on the sheer white curtains above the sink. The chickens went to sleep in their coop as the dusk settled in, and the grackles flocked to the roof… Read More