Lost
Walking to the Tattered Cover bookstore past the lacy battlements of Denver East High and Pete’s Greek restaurant, I hear a faint scrabbling of plastic on concrete. Not far down an empty side street I see a shaggy figure in an army surplus jacket waving a blind man’s stick and turning uncertainly in the corner...
Four Menus
1. We’re eating Korean soup tonight. Yook gae jang — shredded beef with cellophane noodles, scallions, and some long, fibrous mysterious vegetable. And spice — mouthfuls of red oil that make my nose run and my tongue sing. I am in love with the man across the table whose nose is running too. We glisten and are happy. Happiness is...
Scream
Something is wrong. I am lying on the ice. It is mid February, a year and one month since the accident. I have not yet screamed. That will come. It will come when it comes when I have lost control of everything—completely at the mercy of my body. It will come as a shock as...
Enormous
I am in love with an enormous man. Though he is only two inches taller than me, his girth is twice my own, and his weight more than double. I look at these rail-thin men on the street and I wonder, how could I lay in bed next to something as small as that? How...
Something Once Learned
One year in my late twenties I lived for a time with a twenty-one year old drug-dealing stripper named Alexa. Being with her required constant restraint, but I was naive enough to mistake pity for love, and so, insomniac, I often walked the dark apartment while she slept, traced circles about the entry, living room,...
Soundtrack
1968 He sings a Beatles song, “Hey Jude,” when I am just a baby. It plays on the radio. There are four master composers that begin with the letter B, he tells me later: Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, and the Beatles. My dad sings the Beatles. 1974 I listen to Julie Andrews in my bedroom, scratch...
Tommy
Tommy Schmidt does not drink milk. He is scrawny and freckled and eight years old to my five. We are in love. His mom pays my mom to watch him after school. I watch him from the kitchen as he sits Indian-style on the brown shag carpet in front of our T.V. Later, in the...
Proselegy and Coda
Proselegy She sits in a chair that rocks, reclines, and rotates. She sits still. She is my mother, dressed to meet the day, sweater surrounding shoulders, scarf a vibrant crown. She is bald, wavy dark blond burnt away. She is cold, too thin, joints visible, her chin and cheekbones prominent, sallow, all hints of once...
A Wonderful Life
A riddle: Something belongs to you alonethat you give away when you meet someone,over and over and over again. I didn’t change my name until I was almost thirty. Like sex, like your face, like the small patch of skin at the base of the neck where people like to be tattooed, a name marks...
Jackpot
At the Amoco station a man slouched inside the booth, his posture telling me he planned to be there a while. Across the street, at Texaco, a woman and child huddled together inside a plexiglass booth, the woman’s hands flying the whole time, deep into something; she gave me a hard look, as if to...
S__ __T
“She’s a bitch of the inauthentic; her ego’s in drag.”Lisa Robertson, XEclogue S: Call me “spunky” or “feisty,” and I’ll cut off your arm. We made love in a corn field. T: Are you content with your career? Cold-pressed olive oil from Palestine. S: A fire-agate ring. I loathe swimming and jogging. T: She didn’t need...
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