My best friend in the Air Force was gay;she separated eighteen months before DADT became NOYFB. She worked in the basehospital; I worked the flightline. Once on a frosty October morning, tumble-weed skeletons piling up on the perimeter fence, I walked into her clinic. She wore her BDUswell, I thought. With blue gloves she lifted…
Category: Poetry
The November We Are Fifteen
Previously published in Crack The Spine. The November we are fifteen we run away and the boys around the block put us up in a motel room on the turnpike that has a hole in the door so we can see everyone’s sneakers shuffling past. We write poetry and eat potato chips all week and…
Elicit
“Elicit” was originally published in Forklift, Ohio. I am the stretch of easementbeneath a stretcher beneathyour broken body, your weight,and I hate that the last hand you feltwas gloved in blue latex, attached to a man who detached himselffrom the boy who lay bleedingbefore him. I am the minivanand the pilot, frame and feet, I…
Belasis and Hastur
It is the first cold night of Autumnand I smoke a cigarette to myselflooking up to the sky;you can’t see many stars from the citybut you can see Belasis and Hastur, the new constellations. When they first appeared two weeks ago,no one knew what to dobut crane their necks upward to see,everyone asking the same…
Trophy Room, Burnby Hall
A warthog twitched its narrow jaws and blinked alive; a hunting dog peeled its black lips. Our ancestors were speaking through them. One asked why a girl had turned her granddad’s photo to the wall. Another begged his son (too late) run home, unplug the generator chugging inside the living room, waking the neighbours. A…
Nebula Girl Is Born
I light a firealthough it is no longer cold.I don’t even empty the gratebut push the ash aside, so the fire can breathe.I make a nest for anthracitewith twigs I have been dryingand, as the fire takes, I hear something – so I look. It’s getting hot and I can’t quite see– so, hand on…
The Lotus Eaters
The endocrines are absorbed by the altered receptors of the brain.Therefore the rodents start to cuddle. It is deeper than the sea, even if it’s a rodent’s brain.Though all mystery can be measured. There’s nothing in the body a surgeon’s knife can’t find. The subjects I’ve observed don’t even notice the needle anymore.We’ve put them…
He Asks Me to Call Him
daddyand I think what theactual fuck I am olderthan himand the hills so I straddle his lapto have words face onabout howhe might like to finda little girl about howI ama real womanand he whisperssay it so I hear myself say itwearilyand he whispersyou can do better than thatprincess with a hiss on the esswhich…
Bad Behaviour
It starts before your company holiday party, our first fancyinvitation on the fridge. You come in,with a thirty and a few snowflakeson your shoulder. I’m clappingunder my chin, in the kitchenby the ironing board. You kickthe door shut then twirlme to the counter where we crack beers, the iron hissing through teeth behind us then…
The Big One
On the fourth floor of the humanities buildingin the redwood and eucalyptus forestof my university, the ground rolls uplike a steadily building Pacific wave –one of those pounding Ocean Beach in earshot of this classroom. Levelor blinds slash like daggers across the windows.Those of us raised here dive for deskstoo small for book bags.Twelve on…