9.1 / January 2014

Slap. (Howdy, partner.) Double slap. (Hang the hat and spit.) Big boot. Palmstrike. (Let the fandango commence.) Bear hug. Waistlock. Body slam. (Mist of grease and sweat.) Armbar. Snake eyes. Crossface chickenwing. (Blood.) Knee drop. Fist drop. Spinning headlock elbow drop. (These bones are gospel sharp.) Go to sleep. (Stars.) Stink face. Uppercut. Stomp.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/9_1/Arimah.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Ezinma fumbles the keys against the lock and doesn’t see what came behind her: her father as a boy when he was still tender, vying for his mother’s affections.

My Mother is a Cowboy [wpaudio url=”/audio/9_1/Watson1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] firelit and lonesome, her song always the same. My mother is a dry place to sleep, a right time to die. My mother is lost in a wilderness. My mother is sending up flares. Only my mother can prevent forest fires.

“When two people love each other, and they want to make a baby, well there is a bed involved, their bodies conjoin, and the man ejaculates.”

BITTERSWEET The TV was on, CNN, a story of an earthquake, a story of guns and children in Uganda. At first, we were keeping it out, flaunting the innocence of our flesh.

The vegetarian and the vegan are forced into isolation and are starving.

The stage is open water. The audience might be on rafts, or wearing lifejackets. They will be wearing lifejackets and floating, wearing goggles.

For a while, I grew up hungry Years upon years afterward there was a mistrust not of food but of fullness as hunger in those years was prized, formative

untitled, no. 117; untitled, no. 423

Our father wakes us gently without bargaining or threats in the sound of knife against cutting board eviscerating the peppers he’s bought at market

I value pornography for what it illustrates about our ever-changing sociological construct

The seed might have been a weatherborne fluke or dropped from the beak of a bird. It might have been left behind by a grown-up careless with her fertile heart. But as with the skin that held her in she couldn’t conceive of a time before the seed was there.