6.02 / February 2011

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/larsen.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] I.  El Beso.  Riobamba 416, Abasto. Sebastián spoke in castellano but when my foot fumbled he repeated in English, “¡No, no!, you must step on the beat.”  I explained it wasn’t a language barrier but incoordination at the cellular level.

And I Alone Have Come Back to Tell Thee [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/kozma1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] There was no explosion and no collapsed mine. There is nothing you can do that has not been done. I have your signature. Your friends lined the curb and lowered their eyes as you passed.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/moreau.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Mrs. Loveall is a hypochondriac who keeps her medicine cupboard completely stocked for every pain killing need-Percocet, Vicodan, Oxycontin, Flexeril, Dilaudid. After about five minutes of being let inside, Mrs.

What I Mean When I Ask You to Zip Up My Dress [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/dress.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Every night I try shaking it out-the hole in my back, between my shoulder blades and slightly northwest.

(letter to her, without her, in red) [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/red.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Today was an O so lovely today! Each flower I passed smiled at me with its bright bright head & I was breathing in the blue air.

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[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/kokernot.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] The Muscovites play chess at Denny’s until 1 am.  The Siberians wait for the bus in the snow without jackets. The Georgians – they aren’t really Russian.  They never were.  They like to remind people of that.  Years ago, Russia let out a bunch of Jews.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/caldwell.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] I had this boyfriend once who cooked for a living and he swore by putting blue cheese on hamburgers. I consider it when I go to order a burger but then I feel like no, no, that’s what a fat ass would do, and I hold off.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_2/cassara.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Once Upon a Time There Was a Pirate Ship And it Sank When I was five years old, I unknowingly channeled the voice of Ernest Hemingway.

The Woman Who Bought Our Place by the Ocean Burned it Down Where the house had been, hot ash singed the bracken fern.

The stripper said her name was Tesla. “Like the engineer,” she explained, extending a long, smooth, high-heeled leg into the air.  I looked at the hollow space where her legs met, the way the flesh peeled back against the muscle.  A man to my right folded a dollar bill. He threw it against her thigh.

Out in the woods late at night, beyond the city lights, you can hear them. You wouldn’t know they were even there, were it not for their howling. It cuts through the air, sending chills up your spine. Matheson tells me this. He says he’s seen them. He is an interesting man.

I arrive, alone, in Vermont in the middle of March. The painters and writers and sculptors who got here two weeks earlier already know each other. I don’t know anyone, but before me stretches two weeks of no cooking, no folding laundry, no helping anyone with homework. All I have to do is write.

She says, “When I kiss you I can feel how much your teeth ache.” I kiss her again and she tells me that’s more like it. We sleep in.  All day we lay in bed like lumps, like lonesome cats and dogs.  Pillows become our neighbors.

WINE OF YOUTH The pigeons are as loud as airplanes – this is my first thought of the day.  Then I hear Patty in the bathroom with the water running.  She is brushing her hair.  She drags the comb through her wet, brunette locks and it sounds like breaking tree roots.

drinking my black coffee in the living room when I hear the car door slam and through the white wall I can see you.

The first thing they noticed was the arm. Not the one he had, the one he was missing. He knew what they were going to do well before they did it, because he’d had years of experience watching the changes in people’s faces.

William watched Franny as the tar heated over the fire.  They’d tied her up to the same wooden stake they always used.  She was clothed in the traditional black dress, the hem covering all but her feet.

True Crime This story was almost lost in a muddy culvert.  We found a rip in the underbelly, dug around with our grim hands.  We touched it.  Blue breath, a snapshot of the autopsy.  Three clusters of scars across the thigh of an endangered woman.

Blood Orange I plan on dying young. Men will toast to my menace, Classical fanaticism – crowns, palm leaves from the coast, my dead hair curled, placed neatly over a red pillow with citrus spit. Hold me, the veined crescent, a precious bit of Jupiter. It is evocative to eat fruit with both hands.