FENCE

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Spinoza & Co.

A handbook detailing techniques for use in the field, including a routine called “Spinoza and Mortimer Snerd,” in which a low-ranking spy would be grilled at length about great affairs of state of which he knows nothing to break his resistance to revealing the lesser details with which he is well acquainted, “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation” was published by the CIA in July 1963.

Father’s Kitchen

In the night, amid the lusty strum of crickets, Father hulked over a pan of sputtering butts meat. In his splendid red robe, his hair torn into sprigs, his nose gleaming with gamy oils, Father fried a heap of butts meat so enormous that we all stood gasping in various doorframes: the twins, roused from a video game, stood shirtless in the den doorway; Cabbage, in hose and cardboard codpiece, stood before the laundry nook; and I, who had wandered downstairs sniffing whiffs of fried hogjowl, stood in the stairwell.

Two Poems

“Now I am thinking of a specific desert
and the bloom of a lake upon my forearm.
A smoky cartoon, of you, ruinous arguer.

Untitled

“even while sleeping you have to think” this
is how he made his fortune he used her to unravel
her thoughts in the middle of the night he awakened her then fell asleep
abruptly she kept one eye open until daybreak

Three Poems from Four Personal Addresses

It’s the door, and beyond it is the paradise of the heart. Our things—and everything is ours—are interchangeable. And the door is a door, the door of metonymy, the door of legend. A door to keep September gentle. A door that invites fields to begin their wheat.