Four years before I changed my name to Silas, when I was twenty, I briefly dated a girl who was deaf. When we were together, I still identified as a lesbian—a butch lesbian. I was a feminist, a women’s studies major, a frequent attendee at Ani DiFranco concerts. I was also firmly in denial about […]
[hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] I was born on a hill two blocks back from the Pacific Ocean. I was born in a garage apartment that I never saw, and then my parents moved even farther from the shore. That was before my father went back to Vietnam, taken with […]
Oxeye daisy with its petal rays, unassuming eyebright’s honey spot. I found a wildflower called Alma Potschke. Lilium, lady’s thumb, rosy pussy toes. Violet patch by bean pot, apple tree. Wild rose on Henry Street. Scent, messages, allusive flower, special name. Great Aunt Violet’s beloved primroses, her exquisite virgin’s bower. Who better understood than any […]
Too much was stolen that day to change his mind. What grew on the goats stayed on the goats as he fell into himself. The revolution was flattered, talked into a microphone that resembled a human body. Misery assembled with a peculiar silence, diseased and searching through his childhood. But it was the years afterwards […]
feature image from wili_hybrid. fly back what you’ve dealt indelible name, seeds pine needles actually needles stiff as though or large her hands shape white scars in the air in death valley in a lake bed (“the racetrack”) spooky stones dig out tracks (“peripatetic” “ice collars”) war makes its ghosts irritable, all the incursions, […]
For months an innocuous blue envelope languished in the action box on my desk. A distant relative had sent a late Christmas card with a printed update (keeping busy with the Methodist church, the Lions Club, local Republican Party activities) and a handwritten note wishing me happy holidays. She closed with a simple request: “Please […]
[hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] The old man will die in the river room. This is decided before they arrive, by a primly efficient nurse named Anna, who has been hired at great expense from the hospice center in Bristol. She greets them in the driveway, coffee cup in hand. […]
feature image from Dougtone. [hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] It was a church then it was a barn with church windows then it was a photograph of a church-turned-barn. It was a photograph of the church-turned barn no longer standing and the standing of the boy who just woke beside […]
feature photo from Travis S. I took a wrong turn into a sun mask on mud, into straw-glue and smashed yucca. If you saw them rub feathers on their arms, if the claws of bear wrapped them, if the porcupine and badger were sewn to the skin, if gusts of God flew into lightning-riven […]
I recently found a scorpion on my father’s desk, which I have since stolen. Not a live creature, but a specimen, long pickled in formaldehyde. The handwritten label inside the jar reads: Paruroctonus silvestrii: Las Estacas, Mexico—1971. The scorpion floats in suspended animation, trapped in the jar I now balance on the flat of my […]