Perfect Child
“Could you please not wear a white sweater when you meet Greg?” she asks. I hold the phone away and make a face at it, put it back to my ear and say, “Sure. Is there a specific reason for this?” I am scheduling a meeting with my first client at the university clinic where…
Read MoreMermaid for Hire
Already I can see sharks. Blacktip reef sharks, tawny nurse sharks with suction lips, and sleek-spotted leopard sharks. They glide between twinned boulders inside the glass tank of the Aquatheatre, oblivious to the rainbow of reef fish. On steps leading into the tank from an off-stage area, at the far corner and out of sight from…
Read MoreTwo Poems
When the Sky is No Longer a Womb for Prayers Besieged inside your throatprayers hum over whistlesand shrieks—the long howlpuncturing what was. Silence is the first casualty.You no longer fear the clamor,not because you are brave, butbecause you’ve learned that death arrivesnoiselessly, hoveringin the bowels of a missile, that the clamor meansyou are alive and…
Read MoreWhat Others Call Life
I realize that Peyman has slipped in quietly. I feel his presence and smell his scent, but I don’t open my eyes for him to sit down next to me like he always does. I don’t open my eyes for him to spoil me with affection—or not—or even for him to warn me that I’m…
Read MoreLast Stand Hill
After Alice Notley you must do battle with Eros: what else is stopping it / black horned female throwing herself / manifest / out of ash-grass / this scene of the ‘last stand’ is based on careful study / available evidence / we circled all around them swirling / across my steel hood in a…
Read MoreBig Alabama and the Danforth Avenue Gang
Big Alabama smokes Kools on the Danforth Avenue street corner with three black girls, a Puerto Rican girl, and five or six teenaged boys. She keeps her pack in the top pocket of her Led Zep jacket and blows smoke around her face and into the night air. Those boys are not interested in my…
Read More[greenish irony]
You long to be a Douglas firTall, straight, almost immortalBut you stand like a Peking willowProne to cankers, full of twisted twigs Worse still, you are not so resistantAs the authentic willow that can bend gracefullyShake off all its unwanted leaves in autumnWhen there is a wind blowing even from nowhere No matter how much…
Read MoreWhat My Premature Birth Taught Me About Writing
This is the story, as it has been told to me countless times over the years: When she was pregnant with me (her first child), my mother was stricken with preeclampsia, a pregnancy-induced hypertension. Her body did not recognize me as a fetus, and her immune system responded as if I were a virus or…
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