Featured – swamp pink

The House of Earthly Delights // Front Door // Exterior Front Panels

after Hieronymus Bosch Who knew god ate at 7-Eleven, so prosaic beside neon taquitos. He sold out, moved upstate to golf in polos, swig Diet Coke, dream of Gandalf and gold rings as we built him another shrine. He stashed sweets in his pockets, beckoned to the little girls, taught us the danse macabre: stretched our legs apart, planted arbors with our arched backs, instructed us to mirror his mouth, knew how small we were. I’ll never forgive you.

What We Took from the Wreck

Starter. Alternator, battery, catalytic converter. All-weather floor mats. Silver sunshade. Headrests—Tal says the stains’ll clean up with some FreedomWipe & elbow grease. We’re not afraid of a little hard work! Top-trim audio, with twelve German-made speakers & a 400-watt amp. No one makes speakers like the Germans. Gym bag. Workout clothes, still damp. Out-of-state plates. Loose change, heavy on the pennies, like this lady didn’t get the memo they’re worthless. Phone, five models...

Seismogram

When they’re closing the gallery by themselves, Hughie and Ephraim touch their favourite artworks. Ephraim locks the permanent collection upstairs, where three polystyrene falcons hang from the ceiling. He stoops near a falcon to hold its tail between his fingertips. The falcons are white, cold and smooth, with outspread wings that feel to Ephraim like thinning bars of soap. The spotlights above them make trilateral shadows on the floorboards, which tell Ephraim where...

Living with Seals

So I said show methe sign, appear abovethe meniscus of calm water,just as the storm approachesheavy-lidded sky aboveus, and you pass by, notleviathan, but merely ancienthead carved into these wavesthe day now broken into twothe before and after, your wakeindistinguishable from tides,and my hands clench the railsas my day waits for your next breath.

Peligro

Water ran from its wetness,dissolvability, leaking fora home. Trickling back,sopping what it leftbehind. A crack, like a seamor scream. Water as stitch,switch, to which nothing bobs.To float is benign. Drowningwasn’t in the cards. But there wasnowhere to stop the current,the present, running towardswetness and dissolve.

The Breaking Column

Copper and moon shifting in doubleness, speeding to rust. The center of a black hole is prehistoric. What comes out are live birds, mini-dinosaurs_ louder than a motorized axe. You who lingered in the rosedusk of early summer now simulate an island evening until bedtime.Later you’ll write what it feels like to pass from sleep...

Winter Springs

It’s the city in Florida, somewhere around the millennium, where a small family rides through their townhouse neighborhood. It’s a wife sitting passenger and a young man always in control of the wheel, their two children watching from the backseat—their youngest, age five perhaps, pulled up to sit on his lap. It’s steamy summer air...

Dove Magic

It starts like this: my son is having a hard time making friends at his new school, so for his 9th birthday, I get him a magic kit. My wife tells me that this will only make things worse, that he’ll be bullied. I know she’s right, but at least he’ll have something he’s good...

Intruder

One morning before dawn, I saw a man standing in the doorway of my bedroom. I was thirteen. He stood in shadow, but I could see that he was a large man, tall and muscular with wild hair. I woke because I heard the loose board in the hallway shift, and I thought my mother had left her bath early, her skin already red and wrinkled. But then I saw the man....

When my daughter finally says the L

at the center of her name—first knell against the scouredNovember air—I rememberall that laps against our hull,a lifelong restlessness,ledgers surrendering to legato.What is lodestar and lamplight.What is linen, warp & weftof lambswool, lapels foldingoutward. What is wakingin the dark to snow’s laminasomewhere along the 78th parallel.What is the longest day,altocumulus mackerel overlake. To clean the...

pro•found

of a great state, quality, emotion my son can’t stop running into the ocean orchestral bliss he smacks straight into limbs disputing spume smack also the name for jellyfish gathered in collective luminescence a knowledge which predates & will outlast us how do you draw the wind he asked me once and what I could...

Department of Labors

Is it true the female body is designed for it given that month after month I make myself a carrier for various pains: for the sting of snow as I reach barehanded for the glove my son dropped in the yard. For the baby’s thinning gum I touch with cold cloths. Laundry loads. Burns from pans. Catching vomit in my hands: this, I joke is my intuitive superpower. For my knees, saying I should’ve been more careful to stay in the...