Poetry
Blue Spruce
It stands up / for wildness / in the face of the civil / lies told by the humming wires / overhead in the back alley / / It stands /...
Wreckage
When Grimsvötn’s eruption wiped / out a steel bridge, floodwater bending / the massive beams like origami, / / the rusted surface resembled a plane’s / wing cut deep into the...
Yes, ‘I’m Happy’
I went looking for someplace to hide / the ocean. Selfish girl. / Trying to shut my eyes in a wave. / Line all the walls with water. / / The...
Made in Bangladesh
How to suck blood from this blood-sucked / image? A garment worker’s needle is suturing / the scene: she sews a thousand polyester hearts / while her Singer croons, a schoolgirl breasts ...
Help Wanted
Something is leaking / under the sink, unlocated / but gradually turning / the cardboard box / full of Tupperware / to pulp and the damp / smell of basements. The fridge,...
Half
I am all that is wrong with the Old World, / and half of what troubles the New. / / I have not seen Spain or the Philippines, / Holland or...
Contest Winner
This Came First
Behind the kitchen table, April / evening struggles through stippled / glass—corn flung from cobs chewed / into microphones. The children, / / prone to holding after-dinner / spelling bees, wield...
Contest Winner
Portrait of Lady with Cephalopod
Is the girl in the daguerreotype / really staring down the unroofed eye / of the black box in the honeycombed light / / of the studio, dank with elixir /...
Contest Winner
Untangling Gold
1979, Iran / / On the stippled garden rug, mercury dyes my family together / all the dust dancing in some unroofed realm beyond this one. / / Mamanbazorg and...