………….The firewood we can point to is consumed. That’s how the flame passes
………….on. And who knows where it all ends?
………….—Zhuangzi III, 6
…………..In the back, Archaeopteryx
…………..hangs, limestone relief in half-darkness,
Her cervical vertebrae bent backward,
……………………….she remains inert,
…………..a shepherd’s crook to the coming birds:
…………..feathers with sauroid claws, she blurred
the furcula in her breathwhile, as if Darwin
……………………….had drawn her from afar.
…………..Should I swallow my breath in this
…………..monster graveyard? Do her bones miss
flesh wrapping them like gifts? Does the air lay
……………………….lazily on her ribs
…………..to hear heartbeats?—All this flux froze
…………..for a moment as keen genes honed
transposons: fire, form and not, whipping up
……………………….…
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This train has a lavatory like an airplane
and uniformed women in red tunics serve
snacks and beer. I close my eyes
and think of those boyhood subway rides
through the Bronx. My father jumped the turnstile
and told me to crawl underneath
so we could save the 50-cent fare.
I couldn’t wait to be tall like my father and hurl
myself over the turnstile, a sort of working-class
Olympic event. The turnstiles are different
today, more like revolving doors
with fortified steel gates. My father and his New York
are long gone, lost to America’s restless rusting.
My father never left the U.S., even when he served
in the Army. With my eyes still closed I see
him sitting beside me now: on a high-speed train
pumping through the veins of our Italian
homeland with my wife, who sips a Prosecco
and me a Peroni while I read Richard Blanco,
and I hear my father’s voice asking not how we paid
our fare but, rather, if.…
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An Afternoon Runyon Hike
Valleys green from big rains slowly yellow and brown back into the usual. The occasional adonis with the most toned of calves huffs uphill past us. Signs warn of snakes.
An ecologist friend quietly told my dad all these wildfires are not a bad thing but simply part of nature’s bigger project, an exhalation, an ousting of the smothering dead to make way for life. Quietly because it’s unpopular to be pro-fire amidst those who lost everything. The big picture makes us look like real jerks.
Dusty hiking trails get dustier, easier to slip on as Spring dries out. Illegally off-leash dogs get up in my pit’s face often enough that I muzzle her. She looks like Hannibal Lecter, and prematurely guilty.…
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Maisie’s like a celebrity in my hometown. I mean, we don’t really have celebrities, but people talk about the girl that stopped.
I was a toddler when it happened, so I don’t remember it, but my parents told me about it when I turned ten, all big eyes and low voices because they didn’t know what made Maisie stop. Some people thought it’d jinx children if you told them, but my parents explained everything. It was like they were afraid it’d happen to me, and they thought as long as I knew about it, I wouldn’t stop too. And maybe they were right, but the rest of the world is still moving.
Thing is, no one ever restarted Maisie. There were family and friends over, doctors and doctors and doctors, even a priest, but no one could figure it out.…
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and on the days when I miss you / the night is blanked black / all I have to keep me company are the not-quite-strangers performing their selves online / no stars / so strange that I know their favourite sex toy and their grandmother’s maiden name / to misunderstand laughter / and no notion of their faces animated by words / are they satellites / we collide mouths from a distance / I am there but not really / honey, cooled by winter, stuck to the plastic / I remember the way your hair avoided the parting and just flopped over your face / you read the poem aloud in the translated French / a lift-off / to be kissed by curls / tonight the moon stands as absence / cobbled by tenderness / and I slaughter myself to remake one memory
– SK Grout…
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Long Island, 1991
We put Cleo down today. Cleo is was my rabbit. She was my pet. Not like our yellow lab Clancy who belongs to my mother.
That was the cheapest vet bill we ever got, my father tells my mother.
He took my rabbit to the vet about an hour ago. Wrapped her in a towel. Her fur matted and sweaty.
I am sad, but I do not cry. I do not cry very much at all. Even when I broke my ankle playing soccer, I cried only when it first happened. When my father carried me off the field. Then I just sat on the sidelines and shivered and waited for the game to finish.
My grandfather came to see the game and told my mom I was in shock.…
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I was born with a wooden toe. The nurses attempted to conceal its hardy composition by swathing me in a white cotton blanket, but the moment my mother laid her hands on me she counted my fingers and toes. You can imagine her disappointment.
As soon as I could stand, my mother bought me Straight Last shoes in an effort to conform the toe. They were stiff and lacing, a far cry from patent leather Mary Janes. I wore the orthopedic shoes every day for months and years, and still I walked funny. My left foot continued to curve inwardly due to the weight of the wooden toe. I became aware of gravity at a terribly young age. At Whittling Class the other kids threatened me with knives, asked to see my stub. …
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