Notes of a Masked Son
I THE IDEA FOR MY TEN-MINUTE SESSION COMES TO ME SOON AFTER I RESPOND to Candace Hunter’s call for participants. She asks friends—fellow artists, collectors, and other supporters—to sit across from her in silence on her house’s front lawn on a Sunday afternoon, the...
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Matrix of all Relation: The Death Spiral
The Death Spiral by Sarah GiragosianBlack Lawrence Press, 2020. “To rend: this is what I want,” says the intrepid and metamorphic speaker of The Death Spiral, from the poem “Notes Toward an Apology” wherein the speaker slices a tomato open with her fingernail,...
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...
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.
remedies
for Aunt Lydia for the heart disease shepherd’s purse for the...
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