Issue: 2017

For many winters, I spent considerable mental energy trying to figure out—as tens of millions are probably doing at this very moment—how to keep squirrels from controlling the birdfeeder. Day after day, I would watch from the sidelines as dominant squi … Continue Reading

a series of dotted lines that never converge an elliptical cadence of a conversation dropped due to a bad connection. Speech impediments run in families. We stutter our apologies Always, we say, I’m sorry but never really mean it. Silence is the unders … Continue Reading

Not to bless, but desiccate instead the hot spit on lips shaping hate suddenly at center. The confused backing away, backs now together wanting a blessing on pins & posts, the placards & uncertain plans, questions, answers, the demands. Yes, a … Continue Reading

(after Pablo Neruda) and it happens that I am tired of beauty shops. The smell of hair dye makes me break into hives, a sort of hysteria. Hysteria is an old-fashioned, Freudian word. Freud is out-of-fashion, and that is a relief. I want fashion to be o … Continue Reading

We are working in boxes stacked up on wire, pulling our eyes closer together. I’m writing you to confess to my failures as I brew in the cracked tea pot on the window sill, Teetering between the snow and a steamy room with two moon faces. Let’s have a … Continue Reading

Sticky July – wasps in the greenhouse. We dragged out the vacuum and sucked up their hard dark bodies; stuffed a rag in to the nozzle, so they would not crawl back out. See them, covered in dust, climbing over each other in darkness. I dreamt they esca … Continue Reading