Gushman
I told the army that my father was abusing my mother and that I had to stay home to protect her. This girl whose job it was to check out these kinds of things arrived at our apartment. It was a planned visit, so I had time to arrange for my father not to be […]
Tombstone Salesman
My father’s father sold tombstones door to door, with lines from dime novels like _this is a just reward_. I met my just reward when I sold father’s tombstone for a whore. I recited lines from novels as she gave me sores. My mother was procured by lines from dime novels father sold door to […]
Synesthesia
When the girl sings, I see the strings in her voice the velvety tendrils, winding and fluttering the spaces between us trembling with crimsons shuddering with saffrons blazing with the teal of Sunday church bells I never doubt the clarity of her melodies, when the webs of mellifluous reds bleed out and she inhales every […]
The Embargo
When I was fifteen, when my hair was growing down past my collar and my face was fixed into a jaded smirk, Mom and Dad decided it was time to get out. Out of the city; out of sinful, glorious NYC. Out of “this whole rat race,” Dad said, over and over again, to innocent […]
My Own Personal Joady
July 2, 2009 Lithe and blonde and a hundred pounds, she sinks her toes into the smooth, silver stones. I watch her. Slipping on her big brown sunglasses, which remind me of fly’s eyes, she sits down next to me in a folding chair. I am on the rocks. She fishes a book out of […]
The Last Accident of a Life
There was a bit of marinara sauce spilled out on the counter in a cluster of islands. Four blotches of red, decreasing in size and arcing away from the stovetop like Hawaii. The sauce was cold and was slowly drying up, and soon it would take a sponge and some stern scrubbing to remove the […]
A Man is Defined by his Actions
Having finally made his decision after weeks of deliberation, including long sessions of pacing, breaking into sprawling, silent walks from his apartment to the piers to the bridge to the square and then back, all the while considering implications and ramifications and whether it would be stronger to or stronger not to, and if strength […]
Famous Last Words
1. Waiting are they? Let them wait. This is the last of the earth! Codeine. . .bourbon, I am Content. It’s just that I can’t sleep. Boats are knocking, boats against the past. I worry. Don’t let poor Nelly starve: I understand, my worn tongue reeling, why the earth is suffocating and why not beg, […]
Open Letter to Edward CJ
It’s not the perfect photo, this latest of you and me. The light is bad, grainy and too-dark, but the pub was small and mirrored and just what I’d imagined when I’d imagined England. We smile just the same as before, me open and tilting, and you quietly composed. Looking, no one would know six […]
Eros
And a shriek was heard And the flowers of blood Began to drip blood And all the flowers Began to drip blood And the enormous crowd Came to collect the blood And all things dripped blood And the sun grew red and dark And a little boy walked beneath it And the sky cleared and […]
Carrion
Remember, my soul, the thing we saw That soft summer morning: At the turn in the path, upon a bed of scattered stones, A carcass lying raw. Like a woman in lust with its legs in the air Burning and sweating poison, It opened, with nonchalant and cynical flair, Its effluvium-swollen stomach. The sun beamed […]