Bisque Abduction
Her casket has a sterling lock — a key twelve-year-old sisters stalk, one summer day guardians are away. Bisque amputee they free, parts, dossier, undefiled in doily, French macrame, placed inside a curio, top shelf — you’ll have to wait to grow, know, yourselves, places grown-ups hide keys, pieces, doctors Read more
Girls Like You
Junior high is a jungle. Five hundred kids, ages twelve to fourteen, in a tough, urban school on the edge of the city center. There are fights every day, boys with nosebleeds, rumors about drugs, things thrown in class, teachers yelling. Chaos; I barely learn a thing the whole two Read more
Goddess of the Sun
After Crystal Williams’ “The Voice of God,” For Aretha Franklin her voice was the soundtrack to after-school pick-me-ups from the trauma of every reluctant schoolyard memento uplifting auras that filled the room accompanying my mother’s cooking as she shuffled from the kitchen to the dining room, switching up her vinyl Read more
ANNE OF A THOUSAND POEM
Rejoice oh Anne of a Thousand, Castrate the insolent jutting of the cold, dead factory; Rejoice oh Anne of a Thousand, Dig deep in the ground, in Lethe-Wards, Where the purest water and surest warmth can be found. Rejoice oh Anne of Thousand; Like the gray sky, be cold to Read more
A Storm in Milton, Georgia
Emma had been kicked out of her house. This was a first, for Emma or for her siblings, and it really did not strike her as fair. She had not actually done anything, as in, performed an action or committed a crime. All she did was remind her mother of Read more
Message For My Daughter
I will not be there when you are the age I am now— this we must face. I waited to have you for reasons that are old rags of memory from clothes I wore before you. In today’s mirror I see you, orphaned, in your diaphanous future— thin skin, fragile Read more
I PASSED OUT
Queen Violet? Dream flowing like blood from your wound? They put you away, huh Darling? You wear a hospital gown and stand on a rock. Natives surround you, raw sex in costumes strange to us. I want to stand beside you on the rock to take your place but I’m Read more