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Tuesday at the Threshold: Labor 

September 16, 2025
—after Madeline Cravens Not the labor of wages but the labor of care, a labor like cooking, its rhythm and fragrance, not the labor of timesheets but the labor of plants, of dirt against skin and denim knees tearing, not the labor of hours but that of forever, the labor of chopping and planting and caring, candles lit at the table,...

SEPTEMBER SONG 

September 16, 2025
More like sloppy seconds than top-shelf buzz.  No anticipated first soft kiss.  Only a soundtrack of fits and starts.  It’s all tongue and groove, pestle and mortar from here on out.  Pedal to the rusted metal.  Your dreams ground up into a pill rolling underneath the floor.  Dark and dank.  Bottoming out worse than crawlspace...

Disappearing Acts

September 16, 2025
I’m writing a film about a boy who doesn’t want to be remembered. Child of the fire in the mouth. Child of the man who spits at the picture when the credits roll to black. The boy’s face brightens as the sky swirls violet, a huge spool of iridescent thread pulled and pulled through the...

Orion's Belt

September 16, 2025
When I wake this morning, I can hear the windchimes furiously  ringing. My first thought is it’s like following those golden winds  after a full night of making love. When I dream now, there it is,  something to move toward. It’s three in the morning and again  I am caught between hours. Memory is like a map, impossible  to maintain...

GHAZAL FOR
THE A WORD

September 16, 2025
             with thanks to T I say the A word until my friend calls me on it, asks Why won’t you say abuse?Caesura in my testimony, I’m redacting in real time, cringing away from abuse. In Iranian courts, two women’s words are worth the weight of one man.In me are two women, one Iranian...

The problem with memory is you remember.

August 28, 2025
What if it’s a relief not to speak anymore? It’s better to not, then everyone concerned can go on about their business, days ticking past, simple petals dried under a desiccating sun. I don’t know what I don’t know, I barely know what I do. A metal ring  closes around a child’s throat. I stood up to recite...

Duplex: Rupture

August 26, 2025
Mother begins a redundant apology, her dystonia-bound tongue fog-laced & sloppy. I lay down my body beside her, two empty rinds registered for second-hand lives. I dream of laying down my body beside her, two empty rinds in second-hand lives. Mother is a ghost-written version of her mother, a haphazard cut and then paste. I...

October

August 26, 2025
It is an easy leap between words. On my dog walk, drying  hydrangeas on every other stoop.   Drying hydrangeas where there  were only hydrangeas yesterday.  When I use these words   aloud, they become dying, derangement.  Dying, derangement. An easy leap  over the stone wall between   a word and the sound it makes. Dying hydrangeas on every other stoop. Death and arrangement.   It is...

Romance in a Capitalist Age

August 26, 2025
I was skinny as a stick,with a lick like a whip,with a tongue like a fist,with a pistol for my wrongs.I remember being surly.Now I am sure. Nowmy fuse is short. NowI am shot through withthe swagger it takes topush ajar the doors ofa saloon, flick pricelessvases from their stands,with the bitternessit takes to tell...

Just Before Bed

August 26, 2025
You asked me who I was and I was afraid  to say so, as if my name was a fence around me  only recently overgrown. Like my name was up  there fixing a weathervane in a thunderstorm.  Or like it was trying to bury a dead animal at night  with the ground already froze. As if my name was  the exact...

Our Shakespearean Heaven

August 26, 2025
For the amount of time horses spend in introspection  you’d think they’d make better art. Not that I haven’t  seen a few uncannily abstract expressionist hoofprints   or some like the letter C printed on top of itself offset  enough to suggest one of them is the other’s shadow—  though in this black ink who’s to...

Keep Talking, Don’t Let These Killers Forget You’re Human

August 26, 2025
Their eyes are white balloons half-full of milk,their hearts are plastic frogs with dead batterieswhere their ribbits were but you have totell them in their ears / rightin their ears / those burning paper funnelsyou have to never let them forget you are human / their leveris a pool noodle taped to a tv remote...