Mofe
Mofe carries the weight of his son’s death the way a madman carries dreadlocks on his head; specks of dust caught between tangled strands, crazy knots bludgeoned by the pains of this world. Grief. Mofe holds this grief with all of his brown fur that was once white, standing …
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Ten Griefs, Ten Breaths
1. The nurses liked her; she liked them. She had that elder wisdom smile. Maybe that’s why they did what was forbidden. Or maybe because I cried so hard after they called. “Can I see her?” I’d sobbed. We had promised to be with her. 2. The day …
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sleeping bags
in a silent house, wakefulness is our cloak of invisibility so we listen to the gossamer touch of our feet on the linoleum floor echo like a shared secret and we step out into the lavender haze of 2 AM. i once wanted to tell the future but every prophecy …
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Radicle: An Interview with Kerri Arsenault
The impetus for creation is often thought to be love: divine love, parental love, the blessings of cheerful muses. However, love, in all its squidgy warmth, was not the radicle of Kerri Arsenault’s premier book, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Arsenault grew up in rural Mexico, Maine in the …
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The Sea Beyond
Rosie was on her knees, scrubbing the bedroom floor when the news about Jimmy came. They sent Willie, Ellen’s husband, to tell her. She didn’t get up when he came in, but sat back on her heels, waiting for him to say what she already knew. “Where did they …
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A matter of opinion
Look, in a matter of two-three years, it will all be good. May your cooker always whistle, may there be echoes of sweet laughter in your sunny courtyard always, your grandmother put her hand on your head and said. Are you up to breastfeeding again, your husband said. You will …
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Waitressing and the Cosmos
At the restaurant where you waitress, you have to close out your shift by “ten-pointing your tables.” This means refilling your sugar caddy while trying not to be repulsed as you remember that middle-aged woman who hoisted five packets of fake sugar (three pink and two yellow) over her single …
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on a list of games that buddha would not play, one is [that he abstains from robbery]
Once I watched a screen-ready trilogy of deer graze my front yard in Iowa, only by the blobbed bulbs of their eyes in the dark. In the dark, our eyes have the rods to see only in black and white. A triad: a father, son, and some downed spirit. Forgiven …
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West End Girl
Summer of 1977 was when I first fell in love. That was also the summer of Son of Sam, the killer who was terrorizing New York City. Lurid headlines blazed from the front page of newspapers, and all my friends in tenth grade were cutting their hair because Son of …
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Child Poetica
For the Son I Never Had The way you say “air conditioner” slays me and when you’re older, the way you cut the wheel PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREEEEEEto make a corner. Why shouldn’t we talk about what never was? Not because of a lack of love, but because of something more opaque the …
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