What housewarming gift is best for someone moving into a townhouse that will be under scaffolding and tarps for a year? I hope to get Evelyn Lau’s Living under Plastic. She writes poetry inside quiet places…

A biker sped by, pushing 70, with bugs in his beard and grease in the crooks of his elbows. Miles of grime on the plates left him stateless. In the bitch seat, more than a weekend’s packing and two tiny flags where familiar thighs should have been. He looked like an old man, but he […]

In Cedar Lake conservationists have planted fish attractors along the gravel bottom, in the hopes of building a sustainable underwater environment. We are not thinking about science, Jonny and I. Instead, we troll the shallows of Shellcracker cove. Beyond stoned. Aiming for anything clueless enough to snag onto our clumsy hooks. While I bait my […]

The world got wavy like that cheap trick in movies when a character dreams. It wasn’t a dream though, because I was fat, and my best dreams are when my girth disappears. I sat on the couch, heavy in the head, my wife learning Thai, the language program spitting sentences at her. Is the man […]

 “This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you.” -Adrienne Rich You ask me how to spell “ain’t” and I want to write “a-i-n’-t,” those malleable scraps of sound welded into a graphite fixture for you to hang portraits upon: Momma’s scalded hand shooing you to the rhythm of “ain’t gonna […]

She brings shampoo bottles home. I don’t remember if she did or not, but I swear she brought the sheets home too. I probably decided to build a fort. Whenever Dad was home, he lets us eat junk food, watch Tales from the Crypt. John & I didn’t mind the dark. Mother was always frightened […]

Fingernails turning blue again, you remind yourself in a few months this will be just another moment on just another corner in just another winter you reference. Of all there will one day be a cure for, this isn’t on the list, this quick catch of breath in the chest as you glance up the […]

1 Love is the heart’s Jiffy Lube. 2 Love is the dawn coming up like last night’s chili con carne. 3 Love is blind, hearing impaired, and bi-polar. 4 The language of love has 32 different words for “laundry.” 5 Apostrophe to love:   ′ 6 You see blossoms when the trees are bare? Leave some […]