ISSUE TWO
Sitting at the bar on Pacific Avenue. With the seashells in the walls. Same bartender from last year, still here, making the same lethal Mai Tais.
The weeks go like this: accepting, horny, hopeful, sad. I’m four different people trying to establish one perspective on a major life event – on the creation of life itself.
Taking photographs of my hometown has given me a chance to reflect on people whom I have not valued.
When I was on earth I was a pretty good kid. I only got drunk when I needed to get drunk.
Allanson looked out of the viewport, at the ragtag flotilla of ships trailing behind, some of them slow to catch up. It was to be expected with the little time that they’d had to cobble the fleet together.
Hitting up homes peopled by those with nothing much to lose was an easy score. The less you had, the less likely you were to defend it. But this home was different. Its residents had a lot to lose and the will to fight for it.
Yes I am guilty, I’m guilty. A sin was desirable then.
Bring the dancer back to the stalks.
here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome
It was spring and the hills were irradient, like they had to get out all their green in one short burst before catching fire.
The most entertaining thing about Miguel is that when he was 13 he dislocated his shoulder playing basketball and can now pop it in and out of place. There is nothing particularly interesting about Miguel.
you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?
I pushed my nose to within an inch from the rug. I sniffed, and sniffed, and I smelled something…not quite right, but I couldn’t place it.
and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud
I don’t know why I was still talking about the rapture. I certainly didn’t believe in it. Regardless, it remained a thief…
and on and on and on and on they ran, the Merry Men, running from a hundred and one arrows bought with taxes stolen twice over…
You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.
Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.
Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.
Mama sped along the highway, unbothered by bits of gravel that flew up from the front tires and struck the windshield of the sedan.
It all started with the curse of my tits. Women’s bodies are cursed. Everyone tries to look at them, everyone tries to ignore them.
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
I loved Rena as much as a patient could love their gynecologist. We had tea together in her office. I cried when she asked how I was doing, and she showed me pictures of her terriers.
Part of being a good sad person
is always painting the shadows
in the right direction and knowing
what sorrow to art with.
This series is a response to a health diagnosis, trigeminal neuralgia and thoracic outlet syndrome, from a major mid-Atlantic hospital after a several year journey through chronic pain.
