The Lost Poem
Shoved in a jacket, a folded heart, a breakage of notes about the body fascism. Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch. So sing then a song about Oswiecim, about the ice on the Sola, about Silesian firs, tell the story of a train hanging under stars, late from Hannover. Tell me in hushed tones about a hole in a roof, about rushed concrete, about the sinking to ash. Then throw this poem into the sun. No paper can carry this...
Read MoreCloying
Sitting on the chrome bench in their room painted taupe green and the doctor saying the word cancer the black orange sun fighting the old flicker fluorescents, I’m this pile of silt now magazines into the ill past vast numbers of magazines into the far everything you remember the little house all the people now dead someone’s in the leaves the doctor with his eyes like pennies still looking at you speaking in his clipped...
Read MoreBefore water was water it grieved
Before water was water it grieved word by word the way each woman caresses her first child though what you hear is its mist washing over those breasts as moonlight and riverbanks no longer struggling — by instinct your lips will claim the Earth with the kiss that gives each birth its scent and between your arms clings with just its bones — with each kiss you drink then weep and the dirt already rain helps you remember nothing else between your thirst and...
Read MoreCat and Child
It rained the entire time we dug the little ditch. Rained pretty hard. But we had already waited hours for it to stop, and the cat wrapped in a towel in the garage could not wait. My daughter, not much bigger at the time than the doll she cradled in her arms, escorted me outside, as if the precious moments from back door, to backyard were more valuable to her than any gold we might one day discover, or any dreams we might fulfill. Thirteen. Pumpkin lived to an unlucky number, I realized, as mud stuck to the bottoms of our shoes like suction cups. I lightly pushed the shovel into the mud with...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Oct. 27 (Halloween)
This week’s featured works harness the spirit of Halloween. “Halloween Hell” by Marguerite Elisofon depicts the challenges of trick-or-treating with special-needs children. “Rootwork” by Katherine L.P. King brews a story of love, desperation and witchcraft. Keith Moul’s photographs, “Arizona Scrub” and “Montana Pine,” evoke the desolation associated with the late-fall...
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