When all we have is song to fill the space between us, the feather of each note, frail flight of melody, a flock murmuring from my chest, I let go, sing distance and space into shapes you might hold in your mind, birds that form, fragment, coalesce and flee. This moment of rest, a dream, […]
I have plans on the thick part of my hands & when they flush with un-tender flesh, build like a mountain risen to escape my own bones, you will see the structures behind me. All of them speaking of my shoulders. All of them whole & personal & held fast to my own Ohio. Darren […]
Standing with my friend in his garage, We look at things left over: Hose connections, extension cords, Kitchen utensils, power tools, Twenty years of memorabilia. His house has sold, Not for a high price; He’s glad to be out from under it. Another friend, Richard, will take his dog. Somehow, I say, I always thought […]
My mother used to say
if she ran out of money,
she would walk into the sea.
Just drive to the beach
and walk into the water,
keep walking until the ocean
swallowed her up…
The nitrous cloud goes berserk In the nineteenth century, when the toads Were writers thinking up Horror—she wounds me With her pale skin and liquid midsection, Scarcity is scarce, and I take it from there, holding gripes, The papers tell it, how the Pope goes pop Into a new old castle and the people go […]
My father held a grapefruit – the yellow-orange rind blending with the skin of his palm. Two knives on the cloth – one small, a bent edge of serrated teeth to dissect the flesh, the other long, broad, with a smooth blade. He held the larger, rested it on top of the fruit before a […]
This is the day her brother has a relapse and shoots heroin. It’s worse than the days when they were young and he would run with scissors on purpose. It’s worse than the days he would chase the neighbor’s fat cat, chucking clods of dirt. It’s worse than when he would come home with cuts […]
that an MRI sounds a bit like avant-garde dance music, or one of those key chains I had as a kid, where I’d press a button and it would shriek out some distorted beeps and static to mimic a machine gun, or a bomb falling from far away. No one told me that I should […]
Traveler, rest a moment upon your horse’s neck. Look at your companions through the fluttering of his mane: Here. There. Gone. Returned. A thousand journeys, but only one border to cross, An infinite banner, woven from a single shared thread. We are the curtain between two worlds, lifted, rippled, blown by winds we do not […]
It’s the 4th of July and I’ve spent too much time in front of the television, absorbed in a marathon about alien abductions. That night, I decide to light roman candles in an attempt to establish first-contact. If I was the elected Earth’s diplomat, I’d tell you we really mean no harm— that, like they […]
Jolted from sleep, I lunge for the receiver. Nancy! Nancy! Karen’s dead. What should I do? What should I do? Tell him my name is Diana, that he’s dialed the wrong number? I hang up and now, some thirty years later, wonder: Did I remember to say Sorry? Today, when the phone rings late at […]
To R., after Hurricane Sandy The walls are so thin. We can’t beat back the wind, can’t keep the water from entering. Wasn’t I just shuddering beneath you? We both know: nothing belongs to anyone. Jeaette Geraci is a yoga teacher, a belly dancer, and a serious dance club enthusiast. She earned her B.A. in […]
After a certain hour buildings don’t make sense. Lights from across the street resemble nothing, my footsteps knocking on uneven stones, not bothered by their own discordant melody. I would see different people in different rooms, hunched over desks or gazing out at traffic, a phone nestled in the carapace of an ear, mouths shaping […]
weigh her down. New York collects under her fingernails as she adds more stones during the eleven-block walk from work. Jane reaches in when groaning cars lurk beside her. With every Nice ass, baby she sends chunks of the city skipping across hoods and through windshields. Tires screech and she takes off running. Jane arrives […]
The Distance On the subway platform, that man with tissue stuck to his chin once lived at the crux of another woman’s dreams. She knew him in the bitter back of her throat, femoral pulse, pop of her ovaries. But now, between them, clear cut of forests, parking lots, hinterland where generations live entire lives […]
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