Nine Winds (i am only ever writing about love)
I. Pandemic IT IS THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH WHEN WE CROSS THE BORDER INTO MEXICO, continuing the long drive from the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest and head down the California coast, where the land is roughened into arid boulders. We are now cruising the...
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Four Poems
Uterus, You Always the gracious hostess, stretched thinto accommodate your growing guests—threepregnancies a breeze. Until the physicaltherapist asked if mine was still intactI hadn’t thought of you in forty years.How rude of me! But in my defense,I never had a sense...
Ornithology
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was a child. Mother on the front porch, watering flowers. Daddy on the couch, book fallen to the floor. Too young for words, I know nothing of their worlds. Ornithology. Site fidelity. Geraniums. Faith. I know nothing yet of the split between science and God, between men and women, between want and need. Home is a set of sensory perceptions: the rough-smooth texture of my father’s wool socks; bright red tomatoes on the windowsill; my mother humming “Abide With Me” as flowers outside remain abundant, carrying full green leaves.
What We Hear from our Neighbors
Michael and Sara supervised their neighbor once from their living room window as he cut down a hundred-foot tree alone. Both the maples and the neighbors in that part of Vermont come in one size. Double-XL for the trees. Extra-small talk for the neighbors.
Call and Response
Thirst
SHANTAY UNLOCKED THE FRONT DOOR OF HER MOTHER’S HOUSE, THE WEIGHT of her 9mm Luger pressed against her hip. Before she pushed the door open, she glanced over her shoulder, scanning the block, which was moonlit and chilly on that spring night. Inside, she untied her...
Self-Portrait at Sixty-Three
The keyboard sounds like a mouse’s /
footsteps when he taps, middle finger /
of his right hand bent, unable to touch /
flesh against palm. Walking to relieve
On Cooking: A Golden Shovel
My grandma and I spend the morning cleaning collard greens. We /
pick the leaves from their stems, turning them over for bugs and soil. Real
Fern King
ACCORDING to Wikihow.com, the proper way to launder a cashmere sweater is hand wash with mild soap, then lay flat on a clean towel. This is more or less what Jane said last night, now confirmed by an independent third party. Can’t she be righteously, indignantly wrong for once? I want to live in a world where my girlfriend bungles the essential facts about an important laundry controversy, and then I go down on her and we watch Hulu and never fight ever. Is that too much to ask?
The Ghost We Call Meaning: A Review of Vijay Seshadri’s That Was Now, This Is Then
That Was Now, This Is Then Vijay Sheshadri Graywolf, 2020. “We are obsessed with ourselves,” wrote theoretical physicist, Carlo Rovelli in his book, Reality Is Not What It Seems. “We study our history, our psychology, our gods. Much of our knowledge revolves around...
A Review of Mark Wunderlich’s GOD OF NOTHINGNESS
The experience of reading Mark Wunderlich’s fourth poetry book, God of Nothingness, mirrors the page-turning necessity and immediacy of a can’t-put-it-down novel: We must learn what happens next.