Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
7 Days
On the first day of your death,
I will not cry, or look to the door, expecting you to enter.
I will take a key and lock my memory tight.
On the second day of your death,
I will walk weakly to the kitchen and eat alone.
I will swallow whole, without the strength to chew, and the food will cut my throat.
On the third day of … Read the rest
Icarus
standing in the kitchen
in your indiana jones hat,
you roll out the last tortilla
(put cheese in the middle and don’t forget the oil of life
— and lots of it)
and talk to the dog.
max whines from the floor, rearranging tirelessly every time his
pawpads slip on the dirty white tiles. you always ask me if i really think
he has thoughts. i know what i … Read the rest
Hyperion Must Have Settled Here
Sitting on a levee, watching boats
and boats, boats enough to make it seem
that the water is riding boats,
I’m hating myself for
having called this home.
To remember how every day, waking to a great, bright sail
bound across my window, then to open
a door to see boats. They haunt me: parked
on all the lawns, in backyards and driveways,
parking lots, … Read the rest
Plant Your Feet
I’ve got the Seven Sisters in my eye, gleaming,
And a secret in every word, steaming, boiling, evaporating.
Now and then I water my roots and I drink, drink, drink,
Hydrated and in love.
When we stay here and waste thoughts on wilted ferns, I
become confused,
And dizzy, gyrated.
What isn’t wasted in this twisted world?
Misty rivers, grandfather trees and beds of saturated moss?
The … Read the rest
Two little black eyes scanned over the swirl of faceless ghosts. Nope, he thought, no one familiar. Had he been surprised or had there been even the possibility he would have recognized anyone, his bony shoulders would have risen up for the simple pleasure of collapsing back down. Mind going over motion, he imagined his chest contracting as the air holding him aloft rushed out of his body in a … Read the rest
Where The Sidewalk Begins
Where the sidewalk begins
the Mountain does not end―
The memories of her streambed
the footprints of an ant
course, crawl
just beneath the crust.
And they say a seed
can lie dormant a thousand years.
And they say a dream
can lie dormant a thousand years.
This is not a eulogy
to a footprint.
This is a song unwritten
when the pavement cracks.
God Gives … Read the rest
Kendall was a string. The arc of her body stretched and interlaced with her fellow strings to form an intricately woven pattern. Kendall and this family of strings, as they soon became, lay day and night, awaiting some unknown fate. For what, Kendall hadn’t a notion, so she asked her mother one dreary and lazy string day what they were to do.
“What do you mean?” her mother asked soothingly, … Read the rest
The Puerto Rican woman next door is pounding on the dividing wall, screaming that I don’t pay her enough attention. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t pay her enough. Something is lost in translation, a word dropped, or just a letter even, and the whole meaning changes. You owe me. Or you own me. And I don’t know what she’s saying but I can tell that she’s naked because … Read the rest
MONA LISA
Standing with his palette before her,
Da Vinci blended his darkest hues;
layered grays of rain-soaked slate,
olive aged in oaken casks,
sepia tones of tilled earth,
the ochre of bedlam,
bleak chaff of defeat.
He laid down his brushes to study her face,
how life’s light shone through
the destroyed landscape behind,
dipped brush to paint to curve
a burnished road below her shoulder,
ribbon a silt … Read the rest
A couple waited at a small table in a bakery for their order. They exchanged smiles and a few laughs between conversing and reminiscing. They chose this specific place and this specific day for nostalgia and right of passage. Between sharing their memories, they spoke little of what lay ahead.
They asked the man at the counter if their order was ready. The gentleman assured them it was coming. He … Read the rest