In Ghana, the air is thick with equatorial heat. Two seasons dominate the year: rainy and dry. I think of them as Wet Hot and Dust Hot. In Wet Hot, raindrops puncture the air so persistently that the holes they make in the grey sky seem permanent. Umbrellas are geometrically impractical, as the rain draws […]
from THE BETWEENS
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ In the early 90’s, at a massive flea market at the edge of Louisville, Kentucky, a woman from Jamaica looks over the wares. Someone says, Where are you from? She says, Dixie Highway and nothing else, doesn’t look up, just keeps checking out the antiques. She slides into that next […]
Badlands
Badlands is a 1973 American crime drama written, produced and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, and Warren Oates. The story is fictional, but inspired by the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958. In the film, fifteen-year-old Holly Sargis lives in South Dakota with […]
FOUR PAINTINGS BY AGNES MARTIN
EIGHT FISH UNDER WATER A very tricky enemy. Pride is a foreground-background illusion. We swim in it, but its waves flatten perspective. To make the shape of fish I must know fish. To know water as home, I make that shape as well. Hint of wave, imagined against a line, fin, a bell, […]
A Last Day in Oakland
Achtung called it and that would be the last word referring to algae in Albany Bulb inclementing, exponential tenaments — also clams, barnacles, soft bodies that dents soma response to soma. Miles away a man known as my boss eats Louisiana Clams. Pounds of clams scattering light. Magnet filings, roving static, infinitesimal masses on a […]
THE BARGE
I am living in a hotel because I argued with my husband. The argument started after a commercial for a robot that cares for the elderly. The ad tried to make it seem like the elderly couldn’t tell the difference, but these machines looked noth- ing like people. I turned to my husband and said, […]
Two Poems from the Fence book LIKE YOU – Winner of the 2020 Ottoline Prize
A PAIR OF AIRS For Summer, from Winter A little bird said you’re thinking of me. I get wild with torture, poor chickadee. Should I warm to a halo or an angel in the snow? Summertime, I’m afraid I don’t remember how. Here is a snowflake that looks like a lover swaying […]
The Room of Escape & Leisure
The lights are always on in the room of escape & leisure. If you’re passing by, you might mistake it for the dim glow of a falling miracle. On its wall, a woman with her baby and goat sit still on their knees looking up towards the sky painted in watercolors. They pray in […]
Breaking
It was because of Alex that my own obsession with her, one that I could call my own and not his, grew, because when he watched Donna the way he did I wanted to know what it was about her, and so I watched her, too, and I watched him watching her—the way he found […]
Shearling
She never did get out of that town. It is a very common story and this one is hers: Her father insisted she and her sister wear skirts until the 7th grade. No one understood why he did this. Everyone understood why he did this. They had no brothers. Her stepmother was famous at their […]
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