“Avast!” your crazy uncle shouts onNational Speak Like a Pirate DayBecause it’s something he read on AOLHard to get him to upgrade since he’s stubbornStubborn enough to keep the thousand CDshe got in the mailHTTP 404 ERROR PAGE NOT FOUNDExcept he thought it was the area code for AtlantaWhich is useless when trying to buy... Continue Reading →
Brown rough calloused handswrinkled like raisins dippingin and out of the masa.Pounding and kneading la masapara las tortillas,“Para aprender mija” she tells memassaging and kneading the masalike a sculpture pliable by herhands.I answer in English, “No, I don’twant to learn.”denying the half-Mexican part of me and my languagethe only language I knew until I began... Continue Reading →
I remember asking youwas it a coyotebut I knew he would have taken youI came closeryou couldn't runI nudged youthere was no bloodyour ears laid backand I stroked that soft inner spacebetween my fingers.I never thoughtthe wildness in youwould ever let me hold youbut there we sat a whileyou in my lapI felt the length... Continue Reading →
I was twenty-one years old the summer Elaine and I backpacked into Three Sisters Wilderness. I was an urban creature, from a long line of same. My grandparents had emigrated from Greece and Italy, landed in the Bronx, and never went farther. They were factory workers, saloon keepers, a butcher...
My dreams are like ghosts:they come and go as they pleasein a river called sleep.They break the silence,white shapeless company,looming amid the darkness,haunting me with my mistakes—long forgotten by day’s rest.When I find myself awake,they cease to exist. Read More in Poetry
The purpose of this exercise is to prove that red, at a deep enough depth,looks blue.*That light runs over the same beige bramble of brain.*I believe in the dialectic.*This hopscotch across hedonism, this day held up, cowlicked, & humbled byanother.*It’s a handle if you don’t forget it’s a hatchet—the blade’s question mark at thetop.*More people... Continue Reading →
We pause for a moment under the searing sun, and I struggle to see in the distance. My sunglasses are pretty much useless after the miles and miles of flat land, some of it punctuated with dead things. Grasses? No. Cacti, some of them kicked over, some of them clustered in groups like us. Moving... Continue Reading →
Milwaukee, 1993 My only job that day was to be in the Dehaine house while the appraiser was there. After three lawyers, two guardians, a well-meaning uncle, a priest, and a private investigator, I was pretty sure the Dehaine kids had little to fear from an appraiser alone in their house. But my boss Mary... Continue Reading →
The art of the possible in the ranch-style housecirca the summer before the sick cries of digestive mishaps rang out like the first messageby telegraph: what hath God wrought in his wisdomof making some deaf, and othersawful, intolerably loud; the builder followed the hearing woman’sspecifications so echoes would travel paths between bedroomsand backyard; an addition she... Continue Reading →
The best lie he ever told me was about the bull on his grandfather’s farm, an atypicalcreature all the cousin-childrenplayed with, brushing his hide, nuzzling him between the eyes, treating him like a beast prepared for better pastures but still consentingto human contact, almost like a workinganimal. Of course there was no bull, or farm belonging to his grandfather;he hated his... Continue Reading →
