Poetry
Mrs. Mulkey pointed to the nearest desk, said, “Write your essay right now. You have 15 minutes.” Except I didn’t. Neither did Pac-Man when I watched my favored brother play him, terribly, last night, my shoulders aching from shoveling muck deep as my gumboots. The cattle only knew food and shit, so much shit I […]
I walked outside after a long night’s rest and discovered the corporate skyscraper across the street was transformed into a monk’s temple. There were several monks inside meditating and listening to calm music from a diminutive guitar of some sort. Not sure what religion. Didn’t want to find out. I have nothing against organized religion […]
It rained the crops to pulp in 1995, the apple blossoms’ wet cheeks a reflection—the maniac down the street rubbing himself, opening his palm to me, powderlesswings detached from their thorax,his darkened thumbnail. Another man—one block over—looking through the window at my 90-year-oldgrandfather while his wife (the man’s; Helen of Troy) combs her lashes—a runway for her wet cheeks. […]
there’s a river curved like a wrist in rural Iowa, we follow. everybody notices a country thrusting inside us. —you wear an orange blouse your hair—a fur coat laid carefully on your head. people slow down when we pass we are so in love. a man in a wooden […]
With a modified line from Traci Brimhall’s “Auto-da-fé” There is nothing here for us in what was once the town of Custer-Herron, now the bottom of Norfork Lake. Because they exhumed the dead and flooded the church when Arkansas was broke and needed jobs, now there is nothing here for us. We imagine […]