6.08 / July 2011

We created an e-chapbook of Strip for your reading enjoyment. You can download the chapbook here.

Children with Lamps Pouring out of Their Foreheads Descend into the fact mine.

Walgreens [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Walgreens.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] “I am hairless! Thank you drugstore!” She walks with a certain kind of pomp. “The yacht is calling,” she says. (Draped with silk and Swarovskis?) “The yacht is a stand-in,” she says.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Hobie.mp3″ text=”listen to these stories” dl=”0″] Pull Over I remember each exit we passed that sun-scorched afternoon. My hand on your thigh, your nails dug into my arm when I drove close to other cars.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Ezra.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] You talk to yourself a lot these days. Have you noticed that? The phone rings. It’s mom as usual. Same day, same time, every week. You haven’t picked up the phone in five months. Each time she calls, you send out a blank postcard.

ELEGY FOR THE ANALOG SELF [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Laidlaw1.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Levy.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] I want to explain. No longer do I hunger for the familiar comforts: the meaty stews and steaks, the milk.

Harlequin Does a Handstand all phrases from Harlequin American Romance #795 [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Mccool1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Cole, I am on fire. Raquel nearly screamed in frustration, dusted his chest and tapered downward. The world: a sprinkle of dark hair enough to carry the weight of his virile body. His shoulders were broad.

1. We Meet I am the honey-limbed girl dropping wet petals along the path, careless with beauty in the way of the young; suggestive.

When Michael Stipe is fucking me I will whisper the words fuck me kitten because “Automatic For the People” was the first CD I ever bought when I was 8 years old.  Three days a week I wake up with a boner and I instantly start thinking about Michael Stipe fucking me.

This wasn’t like in the movie Heathers, which had come out a few years earlier. We watched it over and over again. It was something we did. Back then, I hadn’t read Ariel. In the movie, Ariel is a punchline; Sylvia Plath is a joke.

it was the unexpectedness of our music the way the stars withdrew when i walked you to the subway the city hissed in time

If you don’t eat, how can you love? [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Love.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] They had both lost so much weight. His melon shoulders and rope swing neck dwindled to boney outlines. Her summer hips whittled to the shape of a wooden spoon.

i’m missing you like as though you lived on the side of a milk carton. i’m dreaming about singing, “if i was your girlfriend,” a wtf? written by prince, to you, while we, ride camels, through the fat middle of a k-mart, in iowa.

I GIVE YOU A ROOM, YOU WILL MAKE OF IT SOMETHING It’s a mail slot for delivering messages to your doppelganger. It’s a portal to another dimension in which you and everyone you know are made of balsa wood and held together with glue. It is not so far from the truth.

Supposedly that baby is smiling; his mouth becomes one line. Supposedly he is satisfied with himself. What does he have to be satisfied about? The nose is too wide in the middle. She didn’t want her mother; she only wanted to come to me. She came into my arms and looked directly in my face.

First: a continent of rain. Clouds bruise belly of shimmying jet. Knuckles whiten. Words blur, focus impossible. Every story gets it wrong about you: there’s little shame in fear of dying. It’s the living that slices and crawls and undoes. The couple across the aisle battle The New York Times crossword.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Hannan.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Smoking cigarettes draws attention to my crooked fingers. I’ve been so stupid. My mother says I used to have piano hands. My fingers were long and thin and delicate as the veins in a frog’s throat.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Ha.mp3″ text=”listen to this story as read by Jane Koh” dl=”0″] charity in a pair of secondhand shoes Mary Vo received a pair of maroon loafers for her tenth birthday.  Each shoe had a slit on the patent leather, and each slit held a shiny penny.

Collect ideas for the morning that won’t let you sleep. Collect ideas for the end of the passage through the porcelain cup. Call it paper. A paper cup. Dirtied with boiled black coffee streamed and sputtered from the coffee beak in the lounge car. Dirty coffee, d d d d d.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_7/Dyer1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Let me tell you about the rat I keep in my uterus. He stores cotton balls, faux feathers, and little pink beads in me to make the perfect nest. I use these in my crafts.

At the school carnival she won three goldfish bearing them home in a wire handled carton once reserved for Chinese takeout.

Purple Math To unravel a word problem is to get rid of what you do not need to solve it.  To translate a recipe is to venture into a forest of herbs and tubers that will stain your fingertips. To render love means to speak in tongues and be slain in the spirit.

The tiger below me is emerging from the waterfall.  The shadows fall across you, the light falls against you.  We have tried to clean the rabbits.  We’ve tried to splinter their sumptuous muscles in preparation for the dinner plate.  I am among the trees, daily, and I do not always bring my whole self back.