She has perfected the art of coming apart, splitting herself from herself. Night falls and hunger claws her belly from the inside out. Scapulae shift and willing flesh parts; her wings muscle free. A snap of the wings and a twist of the waist. She is undone. Legs left bedside, the better part of her […]
I never noticed the zipper hidden over my chest bone until after you died. It’s funny how things like that go unnoticed, unused for so long. Now I grasp the pull, drag it down, reach into my chest cavity, spread the ribs, just a bit, dig among soft organs, and pull out a box. It’s […]
for Selkie In the magic realist novel, we find the firebird in the attic of your grandmother’s diary where the last poet she went to school with left it burning like a ner tomid before she was caught in the wind of rolling stock and ash all these stories come to, their tracks stitching history’s […]
left alone atop the black diamond, my fear cat makes her descent paw by paw. she pauses to sniff every wiped out snowboarder, limbs akimbo, every knotty burr above the white. cats relish the height, as they are, but steadily she meanders down the infinite slope, claws tucked in the landscape of the dread I […]
proper speech requires sharp teeth. the trick is to not make the sharpening process lengthier than it needs to be, especially with your condition. lay out your expectations. do you intend to smile while you speak today? put more time into polishing as you sharpen. do you have a couch date with your soul-bonded lover […]
I unzip my body like a big soft sack, looking for more things to sell— that’s how my grandmother survived the war. When I was born, she wasn’t fat, just her skin, sagging over treasures sold in hunger. A big emptiness where all had once been— words, family, an open window with its freshly starched […]
This disease is a motherfucker. It lies to us in our own voice. So, please: be careful. We may do each other as much immeasurable harm as immeasurable good when we get together—once weekly in a moon- less annex of the community health center, soon to be absorbed into the hospital conglomerate metastasizing its way […]
Even your brine, fish-stink overflowing sky’s nets to lodge behind this tongue—even then, kaṇṇa, I’m flotsam distant, half under, sure only of old air burning this throat, and the next shredding gulp for boundary. Cranes in waterlilies I know, but not whose, or where, or whether they knew you, if there was ever a you […]
The whales do not know that they are small, click-whistle hunting in cerebrospinal darkness. Deep down, pressure heavy under the fly-twitch ends of the horse’s tail, world-tree cuttings root in rich waters. Chase fish, flickering pain like sparks, flashing even without light. The pod eat densely. Debris falls, bubbles ascend.
Reversed: Queen of Cups, food as medicine Notice knots in the narrative, “many myths end with the promise that whoever hears them will be healed of sickness” Not forgotten: old promises, snake oil sold as medicine Mother of Cups in the North, we have missed the medicine of your narrative {serpents need to eat} […]