[[bpstrwcotob]]
Real Change
My cousin told me he found / Jesus, which was the easy part / since he couldn’t find his way / out of Brooklyn. Then this morning / it was so quiet you could hear / a cat walking. By noon the wind / kicked in making the trees swing / like Count Basie and the traffic / sounded like his horn section.
To Deserve
If you were to step inside Mary’s home, you would think to yourself that she is a person broken. Not that it was disorderly, not that it reeked of non-maintenance, not that there was rotting food and unclean clothes—but there might as well have been.
Reparated Tombstone
Weathered Army-store combat boots charging into the oblique night. Blind hands drag the monument loose off its footing, with a dull grind of stone on stone. Then the heaving. Fingers tucking under into the paste of dew and milled granite. The slab’s wet pressure on the chest. Those first feeling steps forward into the gloom.
Ode to Grief Bacon
Weeks after the pills folded/ my grief like an omelet, / I opened a cookbook to taste
Coming Full Circle
Imagine the magic a circle holds, its infinite points—dotted or passing through. Imagine my Tagalog and accent erased, so that I could pass.
Where the Wild Goose Goes
He figured he might not be able to fly like a goose, but he damned sure knew where the highway was. And one morning he would look over at the aging woman sleeping beside him and slip from her bed as quiet as a cat burglar. He’d pack his duffle, he’d take all the cash in the house, and he’d be down the road by sunrise, looking for something better, or at least something different, leaving nothing of himself behind save a few stray hairs and the imprint of his head on the pillow.
Black Light
In the morning, she woke to the smell of fried eggs and bacon grease. Mama was on her way to the cotton mill. They would talk when she got home. Ivy was not to set foot outside the house.
Buffalo Plaid
She wore the same dress they had given her for the funeral. Maybe it was bad luck to wear it when you visit someone in the hospital. The overheads bathed the hallway in soft light. While everyone spoke in hushed voices, her sneakers kept squawking on the vinyl floor. A man in baby-blue scrubs told her that Mr. Hutchinson was expecting her. He took the bouquet and observed that her backpack looked mighty heavy. She shrugged it away from him. He directed her to Hutchinson’s room. She glanced back and found him staring at her.
From the Collected Poems of Kermit the Frog
Once there were stars, / strings to dangle them, / an unseen hand disappearing / into the moon’s waxing / ass. It’s all hanged,
Afterlight
When the telephone rang later than usual, Nora thought it would be her son, Charley. He’d forgotten to take home the extra pizza when he left earlier. Maybe he’d want to come by for it after he finished jogging.
To be a man
don’t sob at the sight of your grandfather’s ashes stored in a mausoleum for war veterans and husks of grandfathers that once loved but have since formed their hands into oysters.
Ghazal for the Cast Iron
Because I haven’t taken the bristle pad’s sudsy scraping grace to scour this pan as I do all others, erasing the grease
Brett Stout
The art that I’m submitting has the basic overall theme of “creative destruction.” I’ve taken my own photographs that I mainly take while walking the streets of my town, while on vacation, or riding my bicycle late at night.
52 Pick-Up
Dad always said I didn’t have to pay him back for everything, but I knew that was a huge lie, the way that beautiful people wearing long wool coats say, “Sorry, no cash,” when I asked them if they want to see a card trick.