Though you grew up in the city, you always liked to look up at the stars. On those rare visits to Grandma in the country, you’d always take the time to sit on the porch at night once she fell asleep, open-mouthed in front of the TV. Lightning bugs would pop off like spark plugs […]

“Promise,” she said. Usually her eyes reminded him of icicles. Gray-blue and bright in the light, but today they glared. Vince strummed his thumb across the top of Ava’s hand. The tendons were raised like guitar strings. “Promise,” she repeated. “Just us.” Vince’s mind was clouded with static and he struggled to organize his thoughts. […]

  This is a story about a mouse whose death taught us what it means to live. It’s a story about a mouse as a teacher. About a mouse and a teacher. And a trial. This is a story about all the ways we don’t understand what we’ve done until after we’ve done it. It’s […]

After Laurie Easter ACROSS   During talk sessions with Lance, when I don’t want to say the hard thing, I approach it from its love handles & nestle in the belly. I spend my time with him writing________  on Post-it notes, taping, sometimes stapling them, caddy-corner to each other & reading them to him out […]

To hold your breath for weeks, is to reverence the ancestors who survived the middle passage. And the ones whose souls were left in   … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.]

Allori painted you so pale, lips ajar with words just spoken or a triumphant cry on air.   …[Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.]

We made jam in the kitchen, the windows    flung wide to let in a non-existent breeze.   …[Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.]

Spring was barely a fleck on the horizon when we arrived, our tiny family a beast asleep. You and I held hands and named the patches …[Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.]  

The year my father was born Hart Crane died by suicide while sailing between Mexico and New York— Harold Hart Crane of Garrettsville, Ohio whose body was never recovered since he leapt overboard into the Gulf of Mexico. My father would have had nothing to do with a poet committing suicide after a steamship crew […]

She contained innumerable bodies. For ages, she had swallowed our deceased so neatly. With woven roots and grasses, she’d mended shut the million mouths we’d cut and dug into her skin. She’d rebirthed our departed into night-blooming jasmine, cats, avocado trees, snow, razor clams, and delicate blue moths. But hers was the kind of body […]

Not raised in locker rooms, he sees his first cocks at the museum,   marble hardons a sudden revelation to him. At least   they look like hardons, he thinks, feel like hardons later when he imagines   how they feel. This, of course, is how all art lovers are born: in private   & […]

In the age of rising steel open me like a door toward the orchard where ripe pears fall. -Sohrab Sepehri   Slide the iron latches, turn my brass handle. Walk through me when dusk dwindles into deep indigo dyes. Forget your eyes and feel for the frame, the last structure before a garden assembles herself. […]

As we lie down to sleep the world turns half away –Elizabeth Bishop   I question whether it’s past time to pierce my ears, dangle silver hoops, feathers, add a small tattoo of a wine- colored bird at the curve of my clavicle, slip on a pair of stilettos, something low-cut. All those years beauty […]

Setting: A bar. Present day. Late afternoon. A high wire runs high in the air, from stage left to stage right.   Characters:   Rob                    m., any age, any race. A man’s man; talks a big game. Slick.   Aldo                    m., any age, any race. He appears to be just emerging from a slightly […]

  CHARACTERS CLOWN 1: FEMALE, ANY AGE. CLOWN 2: MALE, ANY AGE. DOUG, THE LIZARDMAN: EARLY 40S. TIME: NOW LOCATIONS: MULTIPLE   The curtains are down as lights come up. From behind them we                                            […]

Scene 1 During the early days of the pandemic, while we were all glued to our screens, theatre ended. The option of going places was replaced by the necessity of staying put. Attending a play requires a pilgrimage while writing a play (like all writing) requires sitzfleisch: sitting, staying in place. It’s a discipline to […]