Two Poems: to be counted; truckbed
to be counted he asks how long it’s beenaaaaaaaaaa since i’ve been intimatebut what i hear is: aaaaa slide the abacus to how unwanted you are you can count notches on the bodybut there’s no calculating yesterday’s lossesno circumference to the halo of suspicion around your lover’s mouth memory, tucked tight in our bones, is…
Read MoreHow to Become a Lifelong American Expat in 15 Easy Steps
1. Sign up for a semester study abroad in England. Two weeks before your flight, tell your roommate that you’re afraid to leave the east coast of the United States, the center of the universe. She talks you into it. You’re an English literature major, after all. Everything you’ve ever studied has been set in…
Read MoreThese Things We Don’t Talk About
The garbage truck missedthe recycling can this week and even though I called them, it sitsat the curb like a balding man waiting for a date that isn’t showing; the streetlightreflects off of its long yellow top. My children hang from me any chancethey get as though I am a tree and life is strong…
Read MoreSavasana
Leaving the mat. Floating upward. Leaving the low deep breathing sounds filling the room. My bottled water. Leaving sunlight through broad windows. The throaty voice of instruction. My final downward-facing dog. Leaving towels that dry sweating brows. The smell of heat on spent skin. My block and bolster. Leaving colors. The dew-like feel of a…
Read MoreShuang
From: Chen Lishuang Date: 11 April 2011 at 11:56:35 PM To: Hu Lixin Dear Lixin, Though you will never see her, I want you to know that your first child has been born. She has big eyes and pale skin, like you. I continued to believe that we could be a family long after it…
Read MoreTwo Poems: The Low Queen; Double Exposure
The Low Queen After Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen” If you want to be a witch,come to me on your belly.If you only want to bea woman out in the world,then you are still a wind that blows four ways butheats all the chimneysfor a hundred miles. It’scold out there, but leavesome of…
Read MoreHungry for Goodness
The coyotes were out last night, howling, yipping, celebrating a kill on the hillside just beyond our fence row. I lay in bed listening, wondering what animal they chased down, hoping our two barn cats were safe. Before moving to the country I lived in a fourth floor walk-up in Manhattan. There the night sounded…
Read MoreMixed Media Paintings and Embroidered Collages
“Firecat” first appeared in People Like Cats (Red Dashboard LLC, 2016).
Read MoreBessie Smith Postcards
DARLING, MISSISSIPPI, ‘37 Bessie Smith’s Postcard from a Car Wreck & Here I am in ‘37, my future behind me. I look up into the overcast sky. The beach sun glowers grey as the gin I drank for breakfast. I kick up sand the charbroiled brown of my whiskey shooter lunch. “I Need a Little Sugar in My…
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