Photo by Andrew Eihausen on Unsplash After Edgar Kunz’s “Piano”¹ My father is the kind of dying that acts as reminder. When I call I can hear, through clearness, breath. All the signs of the living he does are dying signs. He is a messenger. I wish I could drag his body sled-bound, […]
Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash The heat in the living room worked only sometimes, and there was a tangled hairball of exposed wiring in the upstairs bedroom, and the tumbledown stairs that descended from the front porch were crumbling—all this was how Kim could afford to live in the house on Front Street. […]
Photo by Kovid Rathee on Unsplash I. School, and she can’t breathe, and she forgot her inhaler again. She keeps forgetting, can’t keep things straight. Forgot her lunch last week, twice. The inhaler should stay with the nurse, but she needs it so often that she now keeps it in her desk, takes puffs once […]
Photo by Louise Pilgaard on Unsplash Understand I can no longer consider the alternatives. I’ve run in every direction at once and found myself out of breath, but not out of harm’s way. I know harm’s way, all her horses’ names. Pills and Noose and Knife and Love, always Love the last to leave […]
Photo by Ruslan Valeev on Unsplash I told the mortician to mix our ashes I wish to see you as a speck of sand maybe a fistful of waves gnashing until white stone all the lilies bursting from this rapture your opal lips shiver like two harp strings I pluck a symphony from the […]
Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash The road is white, the color of no road anywhere. The white road becomes whiter and narrower as it recedes into a sunless, ochre-tinged sky. Everything is tinged with ochre, except one house, which is all white. The white house looks as if it’s been drawn by a […]
Photo by Torbjørn Helgesen on Unsplash For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow . . . —Gerard Manley Hopkins The place under the awning where it hasn’t rained. The seat belts in the taxi all with puzzling or hidden buckles. The daffodils inside my shadow. The glass of melted ice. The spiderweb that […]
Photo by michael weir on Unsplash I look at my childhood & imagine what isn’t there archived blank pages partially erased artifacts we all live in a barter system trading our favorite worst memories I social you a tongue I appeal you a slanted pear orchard throat & we share it gladly I research […]
Photo by Graham Holtshausen on Unsplash After Carl left me for a woman he met buying manure off Craigslist, I put in for an out-of-state letter carrier transfer with the postal service. I wanted a fresh start, a chance to discover something. It didn’t matter what. I wanted to learn something I never would […]
Photo by Emily Levine on Unsplash We had some money and we went to Rome. My husband had never been, and I’d just turned forty. It is not possible for me to write the name I called my husband. I don’t remember our endearments. My husband today—someone else—I call Sweetheart, but I didn’t use that […]