The Ghosts in the Mountain
In Zhang Daquan’s famous forgery, Drinking And Singing at the Foot of a Precipitous Mountain, the trees themselves have drunk too much, have climbed too high, have spun themselves around the winding paths one too many times. Scrub brush now clings on hands and knees while vertigo sets in. Everything is lush and leafy; even the pine trees gloat. Above them all, red chop marks float like bright kites on invisible strings. Just another scene from ancient China, courtesy of distressed silk. Distant hummocks, clouds, drifting smoke and mist, attenuated cascades all careen into varying shades...
Read MoreFish Cleaning
How many years had it threaded the hunger, eluding death’s stars embedded in the depths of blindness? I had hoped the pull on my slender line was some shy sea maiden tempting me back to innocence. But my father’s rule was clear: You catch it, you clean it, or go hungry. Now his knives, bone handled, lie glittering in the sun, and my fish lies on the cutting board, motionless as leaves in moonlight. My father’s huge hand guides mine down the silver seam and I feel the universe split open and spill its secret in my hands, oozing organs in rich profusion. They resemble slimy jewels, the...
Read MoreWhat I Can’t See
I open my legs so the doctor can see what I can’t see— are my eggs still good? They are scheduled to expire on my forty-fourth birthday, according to statistics. I dislike statistics. They tell me about other people’s lives, not my own. Since my son died, I’ve been manufacturing hope like synthetic sugar, ignoring the bitter aftertaste. I use the following ingredients for my saccharine: sex for procreation, lottery tickets (playing his birthday and death day) and writing poems. I know the saying Life isn’t fair, but come on, I’m walking through life sideways. I can’t get the...
Read MoreSAT Scores
(for my daughter) Love is SAT scores, my neighbor says, they have so much to do with who meets who on a college campus, love now waiting in line with suprising legions of seventh-grade students, your decision, not mine, to take the early SAT, this country’s fingerprint, the marks you make whirl-whorl weak and perhaps weeded-out, or good, better, best, ancient potency of phallus, your girl-boy mind wielding #2 pencil, love somewhere inside you as I am inside you through life and death we will enter together the doors of others, and some lucky one will open your door, find you waiting...
Read MorePainted Cat
(an ekphrastic poem) The painted cat on my balcony hangs in the sun, bleaches out its wooden survival kit, cut short- then rots chips paint, cracks widen in joints, no infant sparrow wings nestled in the hole beneath its neck- then falls down. No longer a swinger in latter days, August wind.
Read MoreConnection
Wild Cat Cleo will not be ignored. She presses her case for freedom– her nature, not my nurture. There, the door is open. Go before I change my mind! Go out if you must do whatever cats do sniff and scratch, stalk and prowl slip silently into the dark black on black, camouflaged. Do what you must do but come back to me don’t quarrel with the neighbor’s menacing tom, eat bad meat, or run in front of moving vans. I must care for you, Cat Cleo, as your once mistress, my daughter, did bury my face in your fur, her hair. Leave the senses of the...
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