to let me know Sonic
is including gravy
in their chicken strips dinner again.
He asks when I’m coming home
for Thanksgiving. We don’t
speak often. Having not been raised
in the same house, little has passed
between us— no …
47
Back
My dad couldn't reach the middle of his back. He waxed every part of his stocky, thick body--and then I hopped in at the end to get the patch between his shoulder blades. It became part of our Sunday afternoon routine.
The Moth-Child
She was a marvel: bones thin and brittle, organs misshapen, skin with a cast of gray. Most shocking, of course, were her wings. Not real wings, the local newspaper said, but wing-like protrusions—things that looked like wings but weren’t. Alongside …
Smoke
Aunt May wanted a cigarette, so I sighed myself up and rolled her oxygen tank away. I knocked it against the door frame on purpose. Then I fell back onto the couch, where I watched the smoke float upward, …
The Hostages
It was you or your house that dead-ended the road
and fitted my living in until I could nothing
but survive amidst the furniture, the clothes
the drawers closed in that blocked my body
from the vicious in you, from …
If You Leave the House Today I’ll Be Alone With My Panic
I can imagine the horses grazing
by the shed in the pasture opposite our house
—the off-limits grounds guarded by a fence
we could easily hop and signs advising us
not to. If you leave the house today
I’ll be …
Southern Living
Have you ever been somewheres, and there was people speakin’ the names of those you thought was dead, and some of those names belonged to you?
“Rhonda, Rhonda, Rhonda.” And there it is.
Before Hurricane Sally spanked me all …
Behind Beauty
There’s a little purple space cadet,
folding a cease & desist into a fortuneteller.
She isn’t worried about the asteroid lightyears away
or the screaming crew she forgot to release
from timeout. According to her calculations,
she’s got nothing to …
Calcification
Mother won’t let me eat the bones even though they’re soft enough.
You’ll calcify, she says. The doctor’s lab results report that calcium has already built up in my organs, a stone nestled between blood vessels, a tiny fossil deposit …
