It came in a dream: I wasalone, the night around me, a rock as a pillow beneath my head. A great laddergrew from the earth, rung upon rung sprouting upwards in a vine-like manner. I knew it was a symboland that I should move towards it, knew I should stand at its base in preparation…
when the sediment sheets of thisperpetual mass-grave finally erode,what was once so fearsomere-emerges in fragments.scraps once shattered,once scattered, nowhappened upon and cobbledback into something thatalmost makes sense.maybe wrong the firstcouple times, maybedisassembled andreassembled again entirely.for the best, I think,that we can’t reallycomprehend what it would befor the world we takeas a given to break apartinto…
ka papaʻa [kiʻa] 1) archive: As in: The papaʻa doesn’t get as many visitors as it once did. 2) backup, as in a computer program: You’re slow to throw away your father’s things: you keep a landline—his voice on the answering machine—though only scammers call; before Māmā cancels the number, you make a papaʻa of…
Once I sink my teeth in, I have to nurse myself into letting goI am always overly eager to hold something in my mouthTo own and decide the fateTo grasp and never releaseMissing you hasn’t even begun, yet it consumes meI’m bathing in sour fruits from your gardenSucking on prayer beads twice a dayCrying like…
Nothing. Nothing sears you with shame like longing, like desire—you are up on the world stage of desperation, you are a red-faced child reaching through a school fence for a toffee, you are a dog on a treadmill running itself to death for a bone. You are a greyhound in a dogfight whose last sight…
I lived that summer in an architect’s error, the cruel setting sun making ovens of the study upstairs on the right, and the poky mezzanine in my room. My flatmates were a straight couple who approved loans for corporations and marketed disinfectant wipes,respectively. The message arrived at ten at night, while I was sitting on the edge of my bed recovering from…
scrambled eggs i I get out of bed & don’t look in the mirror.there are birds on my tree in my headin the garden. ii i fist the glass door & flowers open.a blackbird looks at mesideways. iii her hair is like a nest of baby vipersdead before they could crawl. iv i peel with…
my nemesis lives in western springs. an aviananger management failure. most aggrievedin his undignified land waddle, like a toddlerin a marshmallow costume on the way to the buffet table of bread crumbs. I am feeding him baguette bits because they have no nutritional valueand also to escape mr flappy rage machine. also known as mr hissing noodle and…
To go around there is perhaps enough,but once again he has appropriated allthe sleep and now the wind sustainsyour insomnia like the jammed rightpedal of a haunted psychotic keyboard,moaning and wretched and frighteningas it smashes, slashes and gnashesagainst the windward end of the house. You are straining to catch its meaningand it begins to sound…
uproarious pueblo browns and Turkic Qaraqalpaq golds make your irises rampageously gorgeous: your Tongan pa’anga eyes have an unresectable kind of beauty. you are an illuming tone. you look good (my eyes and mouth water) like everything i’ve ever wanted; i sit in the tonneau with you thinking, please say you’ll stay. you’re more precious…