6.09 / August 2011

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Laich.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] It was only natural Gwen should feel nervous on the first day at her new job.

Leonard is a food whore; a slave to the fat hand pinched at the wrist by a tiny watch; a doughy child of habit, like his mother, I’m sure. There he is, sitting right across from you on the blue-line train to Springfield. Just like every other day of the workweek.

A low moon slummed among the briars, providing nightwalking light but not much else. In the dead end of the year, dark came so early. Dark and the desire to dig up the slimmest fringe of heat, coax it out of the surface of any cooling object: car windshields, polished granite, black paint.

The Savage Curtain [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Vaughn1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Kraków, Poland Through beaded portière curls pink nails – a shout: chod? dziewczyny. Giggly Ukrainians, the stray Pole, line the wall. From between oak-hard women I choose the dark, apple-breasted girl.

Looking at the picture he sent me of his cock, I send him his cock back.. Now he has two imprints of his fingers wrapping himself in light in a lit box in his pocket. Dear Grandmother, here where we are it is hard to lose things.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/St.George.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] This is not a secret. No man has ever touched me. No man will ever kiss me, want me, fuck me, feel me up. It’s not that I’m religious. It’s not that I’m romantic. It’s not that uncle touched me. It’s panic. It’s deep in my gut.

The Cnidos Venus The goddess herself came to see the statue, asked “Where did Praxiteles see me naked?” Scabbed with ejaculate, the first monumental representation of woman, the first woman marble, the first Venus, is now lost. The men who adored and jacked off to her are dead.

I. The worst days were the ones when I could hear everything.  The best, nothing.  I spoke out loud when my heart jumped its start, and the sentences sent people’s faces contorted. It is scary to think about, though.  A blending of language.  Something private.

We say cross my heart and hope to die, but two out of three know they lie. “No,” she whispered as he doused her body with gasoline.

Woman A woman’s got to deal with many caves, she’s also got to do the dishes, care a lot about the amount of fuzz on the floor. A woman could slice her breasts off at any moment, she’s strong enough to tug her hair free from her head.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Norville.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Escucheme Baby, ’cause this is how it goes: This is me. A big-mouthed, little-bodied Latina with no tits, but that doesn’t stop me from buying the big-girl bras at Macy’s.

Flood Loot [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Lirette1.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Layden.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] There was a woman who was a house. Not as big as. Was. A house. A vinyl-sided exterior coating her limbs, a sloped roof over her head. Her insides made of wood paneling, framed dusty pictures hanging on the wall of her chest cavity.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/labrusciano.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] this is a third floor eleven-forty-seven story. here, secrets hide in empty mint tins addled with dents smelling of places we shouldn’t have been.

I met this girl at Egan’s Bar one night, and she was wearing a sundress and had bloody knees joining her skinny calves to her skinny thighs.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Heath.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] One day Christina Heppel was sent home from school after turning up in knickers affixed with apple blossoms. Another day, she wore a top hat and crinoline, but wasn’t sent home. On a third occasion, she was paddled for sporting a horse-hair mustache.

CREEK [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Glaviano1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] We have no accent. The way we say room is contingent upon the room. We took this class once, on how nurses say loss. The way we say loss, we learned, never varies: Arm or mother. Blood or hearing.

Mutually Naked Condition That’s what I’ll call it from now on. That state of being collectively hideous: skinsweat bodyglove obvious to self and to other self. I am not okay with tongue this and tongue that. With saliva cocoon. With this awkwardly impulsive immediacy.

The Worst Part [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_8/Cortese1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] isn’t the hard car hood, the wrist burns you wear home. The worst part is the dream that he comes in while you’re watching TV with your folks, tells them I fucked her good.

SALT She has a request, the mother tells her children. She cannot put the request in her will, because it’s probably illegal. All five of her grown children stand around the edges of her hospital bed and listen, not knowing what to do with their hands.