I slept with a faceless man
and his shadow. The seas know
nothing of the case. His caresses,
arrows that I taught to soar.
His manhood, sullen.
He hit me with a hammer
on the coccyx. We lived
that spiteful health
with which hunger kills
when laying with another body.
I had a shipwreck in my bed.
He desecrated all my saintly shafts
wrapped in God and bed sheet,
he did not ask permission.
We talked about celestial decorations
and icons. But it ended when the
saint and sign was given.
– Sergio Ortiz…
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“qualia” (n.): the internal, private, subjective component of sense perceptions, referring to the “what-something-is-like” aspects of conscious experience
a tintinnabulation of rain
on the tin roof
or—
I was underwater in the warm sheets, the
quivering crackling of rain above me like
last night’s fire, resin sizzling off the fat
pine, and was someone playing a piano?
here it is, I promise:
a december drizzle awakened me
gently, like a mother’s touch, from
childhood dreams into an envelope of
electric blanket warmth, and through
silvery rivulets on the bedside window’s
thick glass I glimpsed an early covey of
quail muttering, disappearing, into the
misty mississippi morning wrapping
greyly around spindly skeleton trees
above deep jade gardens, the brick
courtyard a dried blood red, and the
world was singing an ode, or a lament,
or both—
so, then,
a tintinnabulation of rain
on the tin roof.…
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That on a day like any other
I walked hand in hand with my mother
away from the rose garden where my father
stood with his hunting rifle pointed towards
the sky; a place of promises, paradise and stars
or unseen angels who watched over the meek
and the wicked and sometimes intervened
if wishes were granted, if enough Hail Marys
were said and if some saintly soul
long dead was watching out for you.
That on that day like any other I heard
my father break my mother’s heart
with his threats of violence to himself
and anyone in close range, where I’d been
mesmerized by two robins who fed their young
as they flew back and forth from their nest
of twigs maybe a hundred times between them,
when my mother pulled me along the cobblestone
path into a grove of trees; our makeshift shelter
where bullets might weave in and out
of leaves and never find the mark or even
that mama bird whose beak was full of berries.…
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When you tell me you are writing about your heart, ask me for metaphors in triplicate, I suggest cake, sedimentary rock, the earth’s boiling core, knowing that your sadness is beyond the power of written language. The chanting of indigenous rainforest tribes might capture the essence of your suffering.
When you drive to Mississippi because your lungs are crowded with Midwestern flora and fauna, persistent mold that grows in viper tongues and slithers into the basement while you sleep, I know your family doctor has pills, breathing treatments, the right tone of voice to assuage the fire in your chest.
When you buzz my phone at five in the morning, with descriptions of coffee, hungry dogs, weather forecasts, admonitions to eat eggs, I breathe easier, knowing that I wait for other words. …
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On a bike. On a path. In the woods. Just rained.
Mud always sprays all around like the spotted redness of horror films especially when I twist the handlebars, curve the back wheel around at a sharp curve. This isn’t just a digging into the bowels of nature. We spray everything, marking each thing as ours. Every object. A tree, a path, this food, that animal, this person, that person, this idea, that philosophy. If it isn’t ours yet, it will be soon. And everyone acknowledges our conquest.
Our tracks are impossible to hide. If others follow our lead, they will find us. Even if we try to hide. They tread over the tracks. Even after a dry spell, the treads are the most natural pattern we know.…
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Somewhere between these fantasies
of ocean parting eyed angels
and this swipe left swipe right
ephemeral bullshit
is the real thing
and if you’ve felt it
you know it isn’t special
and it isn’t different
and it isn’t anything new
but it is love
and it’s yours
and it’s heavy
and dirty
and drunk
walking barefoot down the street
sharing lips on a cigarette
snoring
with terrible breath in the morning
but you kiss them anyway.
– David Lukas…
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We saw it painted orange
and filling with smoke.
The walls upended and rode
gravity to the earth—
the people followed suit.
They lifted their hands
to fan the smoke
but drowning the fire
wasn’t in the cards.
We tried to brace
the stonework
on our backs,
we tried to lay the bricks
again. The broken men
became ghosts and buried
their own bodies. We left
the rubble behind.
We washed our hands of it.
– Amanda Stovicek…
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