People in town had taken to calling it “that baby of Cherry’s” or just “that baby.” This was the first time he’d seen the child.
Read MoreRecognizing the American as competition, he blew poison rays at him, and Bullet moved on. On a street named Tranquility he came to a small violet house whose windows and doors were closed. He hopped the fence.
Read MoreLauren places her hand on the boy’s back to know he’s breathing, and she thinks what she’s been thinking since they left Texas—that she has no intention of being his mother.
Read MoreI press my ear against the earth
for the usual reasons: to fathom
ant scrabble, the sibilance of suckling
roots, the stoic decomposition
of underlying stones, groundwater abiding.
Read MoreIndeed I cling to the morning newspaper,
its relatively ancient news administered in ink
upon the crinolines of many dead trees,
like the postmortem of a marriage
those in the know already know has ended in divorce.
Read MoreThe rivers had cleared up and were running blue, scouring the year’s silt from the bottoms, cleaning and scrubbing every stone. From time to time she and her father would see a bald eagle sitting in a cottonwood snag overlooking the river.
Read MoreFrom a quarter mile away,
the notes of the nearest neighbor’s bamboo
wind chime arrive from time to time.
Read MoreInto the birdbath’s frozen mirror,
you stare down a nose of red clay
as if—past mossy five o’clock-shadow,
your curls under snow—
you can’t see
someone just carved from marble,
and stupid with it
Read MoreThis weight on my chest,
this sullen sadness—tell me, Doctor,
how I can lift it up and set it down.
Read MoreEveryone except Julie was dancing badly,
and I was sitting there watching with Tom
who had a broken ankle for his excuse.
What is this snuffling through the foliage
that tears at my heart? Don’t wander
so far away, I hear myself saying.
But she never listened to me
if she didn’t want to.
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