8.07 / July 2013

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Gillespie.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Sarah looked around for Steve but he was nowhere to be seen among the bobbing, strobelit heads, all twitching nervously, sweaty under the hot pink lights. Sarah cruised the bar and walked down the line of hems and heels looking for Steve’s familiar cement shoes.

CLEF [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Skaja1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] At night when the wind peals over empty farmland, I sense an ocean rolling up at me out of blackness—dulling the blade, icing the plaits of frozen grain.

Un Vino Hermoso [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Young1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] All summer I’ve worked with Carlos, a short, barrel-chested El Salvadorian who only speaks Spanish, with a gold crown on his right canine, and scars on his knuckles from when he worked as a mason.

Listing to Love is presented as a PDF in order to preserve formatting.

KISSING PSYCHOPATHS for Carrie D. [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/V1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] I have a knack for attracting the most villainous and brutal men in town and turning them into angel food cake. It’s an art.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Richardson.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Granddaughter places Grandmother in a good spot, shady but with sun streaks. She kisses her head and leaves her there, but does not forget to bring food. “This is the problem,” she says, about the grandmother just sitting there. Out in the open. In her spot.

One of the Ones     uproar in a hula skirt you sung     the sandbox brave and strong     I should try harder to really breathe     out the skunk of day     the storm I call a home a worm     my brain is a kind of tv

I hit send and he gets me. I’m sending him parts of me. No, not me, just my body. But disembodied. Like: Here’s my ass in those pants he likes. The ones with the fruit machine fruit on them. He said, well, he wrote, bet u taste sweeter.

I Chime [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Chime.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Lamech watched his younger wife minister to ailing second son Salil. He could see it was a waste of effort. When little Salil stopped that broken snoring, the chickens in the yard scattered, keening. Lamech debated burial.

I’m pretty sure of that. This was recently apparent when she refused to let me see my cousin Beth, whom I’m in love with, when we were staying in Toronto. “Mom—she’s in town.” “You are such a bitch!” Mom yelled. I had bitten her hand.

There is no noise [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_7/Cousins1.

} ATROPHIED PRESCRIPT:   In this is the dark ecology of my sex unfolding into space with other sexes, nebulas, and fibrous bodies.