7.10 / September 2012

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Rupture.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] The girl had been cycling home from evening tuition, a thing she did this time of day almost by habit, without thought, without worry, her path always taking her down those same, quiet one-way streets with low walls and lonely old women hobbling home.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Luna.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] It was Karen’s intention to drive Nicki directly to the hospital. It was absolutely her intention.

Eat Something Warm [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Metellus1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] When struck by illness, the body is the culprit of its actions like a wet toothbrush.          They say the body clinches          and grinds its teeth while asleep when the body is overtaken with stress.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Walker.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] My sister always looked even more beautiful when she ate. Maybe this was why my father preferred her, something I first noticed as we drove back from camping in Montana, when I was nine and Lila was 14.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/NikkiZ.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Try not to look so used. Dash of soap between the legs, a moment’s scrub and call it clean, then check your dress for any tears or stains.

Swamps [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Kaiser1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] When they drained the swamp water from his ribs, they found a chewed bit of heart, strung with seaweed like a locket. They folded it in his suicide note and gave it to his son, who gummed it until his teeth grew in.

We invite over all our friends, ready the house. Poker night! we say. It’s been too long! they say back. They bring beer, or whiskey, or wine, and snacks, and money to lose, but sometimes too many cancel last-minute, or just don’t show, and we aren’t able to play.

Well Boys I Think Our Work Here is Done The last taste on my tongue will be sweet potato. My thoughts will be of fancy hotels named after classy women; of flint arrowheads and terracotta soldiers; the difference between earwigs and silverfish. Sandstorms. Sea monsters. All the things I won’t discover.

RHINOCERI [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_10/Gerard1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]          We can agree there is a time for honesty and then there is a time for honesty.          This is one of those times.

1. There were so many things the girl didn’t know, things she refused to know. She didn’t want details about the dark weight of the universe. She didn’t want diagrams showing the number of stomachs inside of a cow. She didn’t want pamphlets on how many times a cell divided to make a baby.

I. I shaved it off instead of using her cream, little did she know. I found the razor. I liked the feel of it. The almost-bleeding. II. It was the one thing I ever asked of my mother: Can I shave? Can I shave yet? Bleach my body’s follicles.

You were the only one on that bus who was white. You did not talk like white people, you did not dress like white people and you did not own white people things. You carried plastic nun chucks held together by tape and you played with cardboard throwing stars.

UFO Investigator From its dark winters, this is Alaska — terrain unknown and treacherous, white blinding with snow, and sky black and filled with these contraptions — or so they say. These men and women who burst at the seams with story. Far below zero, days at a time, I wait. I watch.