8.11 / November 2013

Mew zee um The way she stood looking at the picture. This stranger. Suggested she wanted to be inside the picture. The way I stood looking at the stranger. Suggested I wanted to be inside her. Not the way you think or only the way you think.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Dope.mp3″ text=”listen to this piece” dl=”0″] Never.  Gonna.   Stop.     The Clock    Sweated  & Sighed                                & Died Clinton 4016. Ef Xerox, Ef Xerox. Sonic Kart. Wormchesters. Pull down my skirt; pull up my skirt. Collecting.     A  Humane Number           Cahlo. Catpiss metals. Slush/rust. The child endured. Prospered. A priest smiles over quirks of bad-bad time.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Jerry.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Schwartz woke one morning and decided. It had been long enough. Eight years since his wife passed. Her smell had faded from her pillowcase, from her half of the closet. He spent some time reclined in the living room, watching cartoons and reading the newspaper.

Chaperone I agreed to chaperone the eighth grade field trip to Denver. The completion of eighth grade is a rite of passage here on the reservation, and all ten of the Shannon County middle schools arrange to be in Denver at the same time.

Good Friday It’s always a half-buried thing, like a ship or a body or mythology, with only a few toes exposed and the tip of an antler, a sail. Something lost in the earth or in the sea. Something lost in the body. Usually, it takes up the whole house.

Studies of a Dead Bird [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Petr1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Childhood warned me not to turn dead animals into drama—in tire tread or skillet, it was all supposed to be meat. Still, I mimicked the sparrow’s indigestible call every day until I found its rawboned frame flattened into jerky at the curb.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Mooney.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] In her house of salt she weeps an ocean. Rooms flood and flow with her tide. Her walls stretch and buckle. Skin sighs in the slipping. In the sliding. Hands. In slow rooms her body moves, a saw. Moves a saw screaming. Moves a saw singing.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Smith.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] 1 In Poland, they drink Zubrówka, vodka flavored with bison grass. They know all about slaughter there. The European bison is a wisent. In Poland, they drink Zubrówka with apple juice, call it a Tatanka. Both wisent and bison descend from the same High German.

My First Lover Speaks to Me as I Sleep With Her [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/Raven1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] This is what it feels like to split the shell of a woman. Shards of her everywhere. Animal light spread across the walls.

Gloria feels worms eating her flesh at night. They nibble and squirm across her, in her, up her. She scratches at them, leaps out of bed and jumps up and down hard on the floorboards, shaking them off. Glo has sex with Mark in the daytime only – curtains open.

Goodness it is the City of Iowa in Iowa City and still I pine for Naomi, and wonder about area codes. She leaves her panties atop manholes, especially the ones that are metallic and say “domestic water—Iowa City.” these are not technically considered manholes. I am out of better words.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_11/aptowicz.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] You arrived on my doorstep like unscratched lottery ticket, ignoring every snuffed light. When I opened the door, your mouth flashed like a tangled string of Christmas lights. I remember you easing your shoulders into the frame, waiting.