I see an oddly maligned portrait, out there beyond the field, where the trees curl up the sides of the nubby landscape, where intentions are laid bare in the shade of their leaves, drooping, thick and unctuous in the summer air. Is the way he moved his arm, motioning toward nothing in particular, an indication?
Heavy wasps float through the haze on sagging wings. Hot breath is drenched on us, despair comes and goes, all the colors from before are different now, so that it becomes harder to remember that I am me.
I float, with the leaves, the leaves and me, we float downstream in the sluggish current of the brown creek. Being younger now, I have a sense that it doesn’t end, but in a flash the tributary joins the river and loses its brief individuality.…
...continue reading
Set the scene: this is day two of a four-month study abroad experience in Buenos Aires. It is a hot Argentine summer, which is to say, the temperature is in the mid-nineties on the first day of March. All of you have been here for roughly twenty-four hours, and none of you feel fully adjusted to the sudden heat after below-freezing temperatures.
You go to a big university back home. Big enough that, despite the fact that half the people in this program are from your school, you know not a single face. You are playing name games in your head, matching faces with stories you hear out loud, with pictures next to names in group chats. The room is filled with five long tables, and as you are seated second-closest to the front, you see in front of you a set of quintuplets.…
...continue reading
Rebecca stood under the plum tree. She reached her tiny fingers up, picking one off the lowest branch. It barely fit in the palm of her hands. Rebecca ran through the yard toward the porch, careful to not trip. Her mother, May, sat stitching a blue dress with yellow patches. May watched her daughter run up with a plum in her hands.
Lord, she prayed, give me patience.
“Momma,” Rebecca said, “you fixing my dress for church?”
“Baby, no. We ain’t going today. And, I told you to leave that tree alone,” May said, eyes never leaving her stitching. “Go put that plum back where you found it. Give the deer something to eat.”
“Momma,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes. “I picked it off the tree.”…
...continue reading
this man
who surfaces
at rush hour
to homeward
bound cars
tucked in a
once-tan jacket
grey beard
(the kind Caribbean
economists wear)
walking in a side waddle
bad feet, wrong shoes
propelling into the street
when lights change
to stop cars
knock on windows…
...continue reading
My brother existed first in the loud prayers of my mother before he was born. Prayers like Lord if you give me this son I am asking for, I will worship you for the rest of my life. I will dedicate him back to you, use him for your glory. Show yourself, Father, let people know that I serve a living God. It happened that my parents counted me Chinonso, as their first bundle of joy. My younger sister Chisomaga, a second bundle of joy, and my youngest sister Chimuanya, the third bundle of joy. Still, three of us are incomplete bundles of joy because we are girls. Daddy came to the conclusion that it must be his portion in the land of the living to bear a son that will hopefully bear more sons who will carry on his surname for all eternity.…
...continue reading
At a sandwich shop in San Francisco
I asked to be called Travis.
I walked by the Natural History Museum
where a cave of Neolithic men
were learning to play the spoons
for all the hairy babes preening fistfuls of knotted hair.
A bear of smoke crawls over their backs,
shaped like the Rottweiler outside my window in the morning.
Police sirens float over, and he harmonizes.
ah-roo-roo-roo
but low
as if he wants me
to
hear
them
too
– Andrew Gibson…
...continue reading
April raindrops tap on the tin roof as if a giant is standing outside pouring a bag of rice onto the bus. Doc only vaguely hears them over the rumbling engine, but he can see as they slide down the thin horizontal windows across the aisle. After today, his life will never be the same. But that’s not why he’s here, so he makes a point not to dwell on it.
Conversations hum in a quiet monotone, mixing with the rattling of chains and scraping of metal on metal. A couple voices, however, have distinguished themselves above the murmuring over the past six hours, one of which belongs to a man in a cage near the front who boasts of the two people he shot and killed.…
...continue reading