When he was done arguing he went to the barn, he had a wrenchcrooked under his left arm.(He’d been fixing the tractorbefore the fight began).The sow shuffled, idle in her stall.He paused a moment, he put his wife’sface on the sow and the sow’sface on his wife.When he was done beatinghe scooped the sausage meat…
Category: Poetry
What You Need to Know About Your Caesarean Section
Turning the pamphlet’s well-worn and underlined pages,in the soft green waiting room,comparing bellies; yours ripe and ready,mine a dream-filled pillow. Choosing the one, that was hard,the right one, my ideal other,the right hair, right eyes.Everything must be perfect for baby, The plan meticulous,your home towna twenty-five minute drive,just over the state line. Our meeting “Hey,…
Afterlives – Delores Haze (Lolita)
It was Lo in the morning? No.It was high in the morning, higherstill in the afternoon, chasing butterflies’reflections, the higher hire of his lowing. His ass in jail, he put a spin, spun a tailthat followed him right up his end.His story makes me pukenlaugh.He stole my this, he killed my thatWhat bull! That stupid,…
Elegy for the Lost Minutes
The woman with the wheelchair-bound husbandis losing kindness in front of the elevators. We are standingin the car she has been waiting for for what seems like hours. We are thinking of inconsequential things – sandwich, cookies, coffee, weekend – clutching our wallets close to our chests,while the woman holds what’s left of her kindness…
The Points of the Kite
The points of the kite tilt to the groundTurn and turn, air supports and thenNeglectsAllows a collapse before collectingUp the wings and fragile framework, again.Tethered, it must land, it must returnWe watch, a small crowdSmoking cadged fags, mouths full of cheap ciderSwigged back, heads tipped up, Eyes narrowed, watching a sky the colour of washing…
Two Seasons of Crashing
I was pacing the edge of town until the househad gone to bed so I could get on the couchand not look at anybody. I hid from the rainbeneath the awning of the rug emporium. A sparrow flew into one of the display windows and then flew into the otherdisplay window and then into the…
More or Less the Department of History
After we fucked on the classroom tableI felt a searing need to be alone:to make my own way out into the dark,walk the knotted miles of country lanes home. Snow was falling: slow shivers of waxfrom the high, guttering candles of the night.The coiling lanes slid smooth as skin, as faras childhood: snow seemed tied…
Timothy Hawkins
When they said I was going to be on the radio, nobody told me they meant from the start to the end: Timothy Hawkins was born as a loser, tonight he will die as one, live for your pleasure. Ninety dull years he has lived without living – a minute and a half silence, one…
How Alice Might Have Felt
I.In the lush yellow light before the storm,I ask you for your autograph. I’m jittery,a half-tame wolf bitch poised to boltacross the emptying bar. We talk–you over beer, me over whiskey, glassrocks-cold and skinned in water–until thunder heaves the pregnant air.You grasp the hem of my skirt, runyour fingers between skin and fabriclike a bee…
Lies We Believe About Ourselves
Adolescence wasn’t that big a dealit was the apocryphal apocalypsethe big bang that wasn’t It was the hot rush of hope and thelingering melancholy of schoolfingering everything that moves It was turning to my first love to saythe rest of my life is a long timeI don’t want to spend it with you William Breden…