“Got a boyfriend?” The red-faced doctor with big hands asks, leaning over Cindy’s pubes. “Kind of.” Cindy blushes. Watching French films with Jerry isn’t really dating. The only guy at school sharing her passion for Truffaut and Godard, he talks nonstop about cinematography and mise-en-scene. Driving them to the Vogue in his dad’s new ’76 Subaru, his long fingers dance along the steering wheel as he gushes about hand-held cameras and jump cuts. “Your mother was smart to …
My dream begins like a fairy tale. Wild wolves are in the house—not tame ones, like the insipid talker that seduced the girl in red—but loud, howling wolves. Their mouths open, their teeth gleaming. A whole pack of them disrupting a party my mother has planned for weeks. They tear through the buffet: the carefully arranged relish tray, perfectly seasoned chicken casserole, elaborately decorated raspberry torte. Not to mention what they do to the guests. Terrorizing people I don’t even …
First assignment: Underline the words that describe you. My father has a hunchback for beauty. Gunshot in Borno— girls do not know how to smile. Last summer, like before, the sun is an assault in the mouth of a dwarf Jamal threw a rock at my pelvis, Simi fell in love, so she sang Complete me. This is a type of poem for ghosts. Sometimes, when I try to cry, I am often betrayed by my tears Second Assignment: Use those words to form the mouth of a poem. The language of our grief is a …
The boy in the TV has golden streaks like honey in his hair and two blue diamonds for eyes, face open like a window streaming sunlight. Watch as his brows furrow over inscrutable hazel orbs, jet black hair slicked smooth and reflecting pale moonlight. The boy in the TV is a shapeshifter, and now he has your attention. The boy in the TV accumulates every fantasy you’ve concocted and reflects them all back to you, a beautiful mirror of your mind. He reminds you of a boy you dreamed …
slimy & joy-wet. you're night's work of art, hatched from nothing into the belly of a jaw—softening the hard ground of language. your pronouns: ruffled between edges, as the heft threatens to refund your mother in past perfect tense. my tongue, raised towards your image—spills the purple consonant where a curve ends. say, I howl into wetness, shards of you grieve out in thanksgiving. you, scolding bronze into portrait. light waylays me, till I whiten & duplicate. whiten & play …
No heavy machinery could tame the sandy unpaved road outside Babcia’s Augustów house. A grunting tractor pulling a drum came through every couple of months, but soon all who walked the road could feel its sting in their calves again. Perched on the northeastern tip of Poland, Augustów was an island carved out by four deep lakes and a few rivers which made the area’s map look like a connect-the-dots completed by a tipsy child. A dense forest surrounded the town best known for …