June 2012
21 posts
the information man | buddy wakefield
i have heard that if you pull a bent breath through the second hole of a harmonica tuned to the key of georgia while a train moves by on the tail end of dusk there is a good chance you will finally know what it means to rest.
i have not yet rested.
it takes a long time to make love with someone who hates themselves.
the states | george tsongas
it’s an amazing place, where no one enjoys life but they all want to live forever
i remember | anne sexton
by the first of august the invisible beetles began to snore and the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color—no more than the sand was a color and we had worn our bare feet bare since the twentieth of june and there were times we forgot to wind up your alarm clock and some nights we took our gin warm and neat from old jelly glasses while the sun blew out of sight like a red picture hat...
to n, in absentia | robyn sarah
i do not know how you went out of my life or when exactly. the leaves of the norway maple are beginning to turn yellow, fall has come. i last saw you on an evening at the end of july but i think you were already gone then, i think by then you had been gone for a long time. and so it seems meaningless to count the days yet still i count them, august, september, october now half over, terrible days,...
absence | elizabeth jennings
i visited the place where we last met. nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended, the fountains sprayed their usual steady jet; there was no sign that anything had ended and nothing to instruct me to forget. the thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees, singing an ecstasy i could not share, played cunning in my thoughts. surely in these pleasures there could not be a pain to bear or...
the land of nod | james arthur
growing up, i barely knew the bible, but read and reread the part when cain drifted east or was drawn that way, into a place of desolation, the land of nod, there to begin, with a wife
of unknown origin, another race of men, under the mark of god. as a boy, i thought nod would be a place where the blue scillas would bloom gray, a country of the rack and screw,
the serrated sword, where the very...
driving montana, alone | katie phillips
i smile at the stack of bob dylan cds you are not holding in the passenger seat. storm clouds have gathered. my “wow” rises over the harmonica for your benefit, but you cannot see that one sunlit peak in the midst of threatening sky. the road turns wet at the “welcome to anaconda” sign, and i pat my raincoat, loosely folded where your lap should be. “anaconda was...
all secrets of past tense have just come my way |...
all secrets of past tense have just come my way, but i still don’t know what I’m going to do next.
the god who loves you | carl dennis
it must be troubling for the god who loves you to ponder how much happier you’d be today had you been able to glimpse your many futures. it must be painful for him to watch you on friday evenings driving home from the office, content with your week— three fine houses sold to deserving families— knowing as he does exactly what would have happened had you gone to your second choice for...
7 things i never told my older sister because i...
1. if you ever feel like leaving him, renting a rich blue convertible and becoming someone else somewhere in the desert, i’ll go with you 2. thank you for all the horrible and/or dangerous things you did first, so i could learn from your mistakes. specifically: getting herpes, dropping out of school, getting a trendy dream catcher tattoo. 3. i dropped acid with your ex-girlfriend. 4. remember...
this is how she makes me feel | anis mojgani
like a nuclear reactor power plant that harnesses not any strange harmful energy but rather the energy of the sun of daisies, of golden marbles filled up past my brim behind me, there is a rainbow the nuclear reactor that i am harnesses the power of the rainbow capturing the whole spectrum of color and light
this is how she makes me feel like a great grey stoned tall tower rising up out...
marriage | lawrence raab
years later they find themselves talking about chances, moments when their lives might have swerved off for the smallest reason. what if i hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning? what if you’d been out, as you were when i tried three times the night before? then she tells him a secret. she’d been there all evening, and...
this is the part of the story i'd rather not tell...
how at 13 i would lay awake at night deciding which friend or family member would have to die so that i might be aggrieved enough to be interesting, so that i would have the permission to become more withdrawn and mysterious and thus, more attractive. i’d lay awake at night, plotting who it should be, how it should go for the maximum impact. it would have to be something epic so that i could...
4 tags
i will take my pants off while you videotape the...
i want to rob every inch of last week, sell it back to god. i’ll tell him you’re the reason my medicine cabinet is full, but you’re also the reason i can sleep past noon.
we’re even.
what you have to get over | dick allen
stumps. railroad tracks. early sicknesses, the blue one, especially. your first love rounding a corner, that snowy minefield. whether you step lightly or heavily, you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance before evening falls, letting no one see you wend your way, that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend, meaning “to proceed, to journey, to travel from one place to...
practice | kellam ayres
grammatolatry:
You must make this mistake once— pour boiling liquid into a blender, then pulse it. Watch the steam blow the lid straight off. When you see your burned hands, you’ll scream. Other mistakes you repeat, finding yourself in a familiar place, but worn out, like pigeons circling a roof, the flock growing bigger, then smaller. It will be this way with love. Your neighbor plays something...
one love story, eight takes | brenda shaughnessy
where you are tender, you speak your plural. - roland barthes
8. as it turns out, there is one wrong way to tell this story. i was wrong to tell you how multi-true everything is, when it would be truer to say nothing. i’ve invented so much and prevented more. but i’d like to talk with you about other things, in absolute quiet. in extreme context. to see you again, isn’t...
sleep positions | lola haskins
this is how we sleep: on our backs, with pillows covering our chests, heavy as dirt on our sides, like wistful spoons clenched, knees in-tucked, arms folded wide, like sprawling-rooted lotuses in iowa on top of pictures of hawaii, huge white flowers on blue in new york on black satin in china on straw. this is how our dreams arrive: as hot yellow taxicabs; as sudden blazing steam, we who have been...
the paradise flick | michael sharkey
how do we know eve and adam were happy, deprived, as they were, of a childhood?
eve never knew, unlike adam, a world that was free of the chatter of others.
how did she cope? and how could she choose, if she’d wanted, to live by herself?
what did the man eat that made him hear voices, while eve was inventing frustration?
where could she go for a break from the sound of himself, in his skin suit,...
an attempt at jealousy | marina tsvetaeva
how is your life with that other one? simpler, is it? a stroke of the oars and a long coastline— and the memory of me
is soon a drifting island (not in the ocean—in the sky!) souls—you will be sisters— sisters, not lovers.
how is your life with an ordinary woman? without the god inside her? the queen supplanted—
how do you breathe now? flinch, waking up? what do you do, poor man?
“hysterics and...
dust | dorianne laux
someone spoke to me last night told me the truth. just a few words,but i recognized it. i knew i should make myself get up, write it down, but it was late, and i was exhausted from working all day in the garden, moving rocks. now, i remember only the flavor — not like food, sweet or sharp. more like fine powder, like dust. and i wasn’t elated or frightened, but simple rapt, aware....
