I asked the tangle: can you spare a thread? And the tangle’s fibrous mouth formed a hole, and said: you have some nerve, some artery, some hair, some twisted DNA, […]
The wrong candle
This candle must have come from petroleum, stolen black stash of Hades, not wax of Kore’s bees. A philosopher wrote that a proper tragedy must begin with an offense, an […]
Belly full of ink
I have a belly full of ink — penultimate nausea. I swallowed something through my eyes, I think. The tensions between constellations arrayed my retinas’ red antennas with star starts. […]
Pythagorean Hymn
Sphere and cylinder, skeleton formulas of thought, yet walk on shrieking chalk heels these neural corridors, float and grin ghostlike through dusty synaptic nodes. The god of mathematics laughs at […]
Poetry Game Instructions
When the round begins place the token on your tongue. Try to pronounce a flower. Try to pronounce a city. Drop the dice in the river. Spin the thousand-year spinner. […]
Training memes
Prior to these glowing screens were billboards, placards, sandwich boards, curated store windows that said many of the same things: notice me, be enticed by me, think like me, buy […]
Brave Little Venue, No. 1: Atlantis Lounge
The red velvet curtain is drawn to hide the street windows and stained glass signage behind the stage. In the center of the ceiling, in the shadows, a mirror ball spins slowly, […]
Grandmother Corntassel
Grandmother Corntassel from the rolling Cherokee woods had known seventeen summers when she married John Bradley, grandson of an immigrant from Yorkshire to Virginia. When I was young I thought all […]
The mountain watched us
We returned to the thrice-burned wood, shoulder of Klickitat once dense green, now spiked with ghost trees. Close to downed trunks ash white and charred black we turned soil, pulled […]
Pedestrian Aria
I have patient feet. I wait for the signal. Wheels turn around me. People move themselves. The light changes. The light always changes. Is this your light, the light that […]