The only hard thing is the alarm everything else I love— flicking on the coffee dumping goggles, cap and clothes into my bag for later slipping on the suit greeting the sleepy doorman who opens the door to the street in morning air that says Manhattan is an island with its scent of rivers and tides only blocks away how the light changes with the seasons darkening now with fall how late in winter the sun sometimes rises while I’m still sitting on a subway plastic seat the almost-empty car not yet carrying the scrum of commuters who’ll be boarding…
Author: Mom Egg Review
to the pigpen I have prepared for you. Come and settle your fumes over the couch where I have lain myself among my books awaiting your arrival, O Grievance and Resentment, you well-worn pair, with your inspirations. You, the comfy old shoes of my voice, what has happened to us? Haven’t you always been here to march my swallowed sarcasm across the page? Didn’t you always make yourselves handy when some slight or infidelity rankled my memory? Hasn’t your purpose always been to lace yourselves snugly around my desire for revenge? Suppose I had an entire day free to brood…
Drunk and depressed twenty-five or so, waiting at bus stop, Cyclone behind me. Wanted to turn and ride but too self-conscious, even drunk. A pity. I loved this brain-rattling roller coaster this gravity train the slams and turns and twists and whips like slaps. I preferred the skull-shaking first car when I could get it. Once Paul and loopy I plus his friend and pale green girlfriend were crossing the street when a car starts backing up. He pulls me out of the way saying there’s a Chinese saying if you save someone’s life you are responsible…
Your wine-deep Eyes wound In the dark The gift of abandon on your lips: Open roses to my thirst Exultant petals *** I spilled the wine The stain spreading Over my prince’s white scarf A sign the rains of distance Had come between us City lights on your aging skin No longer dark promise Of your solar throat Throbbing around me In the Metro tunnel I encircled your waist Found your mouth, teeth closed gates We take different exits Your gaze blazes through my raincoat I resist the urge to turn We each retreat To another language To the land…
When she began to report on the world outside (first grade), strange pages came home. I saw everything all over again—the hunybee, the bootiful air, and the erthworm primitive without his “a.” Now she keeps a stethoscope in her car. In the emergency room, the paddock, the pasture, and on the exam table—paws, panting, skitterings, and wings, black hooves, and orb-like eyes— she listens to all sizes of beats and murmurs with that rapt listening of one who is tuned into a dark-chambered muscle. Afterwards, her fingers fly over the keys to say what was inside. She says that every…
Garissa University College – Kenya, April 2nd, 2015 Roused from sleep, she stands naked, voice locked in her tongue. Around her, her sisters, gripped in the chains of their eyes locked on the masked figures the long, dull barrels of their rifles. The one who approaches her – she can smell the sulfur on his hands his body’s sweat and dust – asks, What is the name of the Prophet’s first wife? Before the gunpowder explodes before the world goes black how slowly the bullet moves desiring her heat, seeking the death spot on her forehead. Elizabeth Lara…
Let’s gently unstick yours frozen to a popsicle (no more blood, please!) you insisted on a winter’s morn in front of the Smithsonian. Let’s use the Ouija board to talk to ghosts in the attic eave where we were once small enough to fit. Let’s “accidentally” squirt ketchup on Granddaddy when he snaps us to “be still.” Let’s read the dirty parts of Dad’s library books under the covers before our epic blanket tug of war. Let’s be the judge and jury when mom tells law cases for bedtime stories. Let’s scream Grandaddy’s favorite word “chichibofumbee” on San Francisco trolleys…
I love Bambi when a hunter shoots Bambi’s mother I hide under the seat until the movie ends My mother holds me whispers she’ll never leave I don’t know that love is my mother I only know her perfume her red lips her cigarettes are my home I am in love with Ricky Nelson’s white teeth Dion’s Bronx accent Chubby Checker’s twist Ponderosa’s Little Joe my mother calls me Boy Crazy When the Beatles come they conquer my American heart I shut my mother out finger-love the Fab Four in my princess bed A boy from the city moves into…
I Don’t Care that I’m silhouetted by fire or gold is the color of my back- drop. When a man drops in on me like a drink at the bar—only exotic with pomegranate juice or cassava or the acrid tears of his estranged wife— I want to wipe myself clear to a new portico where lights are not dripping salt sculptures of some forgotten metropolis It takes no time to know me: only nights dense as ground walnuts rubbed together with sugar and cloves I thought I would have written but the passion’s not there, only the pleasure like we’re…
Face Card: Queen of Shadows Retrat de la meve germana, 1923/1926 Dalí I think you tried a classic portrait first pale face, calm eyes, curved brows & hair blushed lips and cheeks then said fuck this and flipped the canvas up- side down to paint your sister’s ghost staring wild eyed past a cobwebbed cloak, her former visage swinging crown-down like a belted trophy thickened fingers stroke the comely displaced chin—unopposed the Queen of Shadows plays her trump Mary Craig’s recent publications include an essay in Quarterly West. She received the 2014 Writers at Work Fellowship in Literary Nonfiction. An…