The Old West End
With a vein of Lucille Clifton’s “In the Inner City” Our mothers left for work before we woke for school in Toledo in 1975 and our fathers left us latchkeys on the windowsill or under the mat in the inner part of the screen door. Our city was marked by demarcation zones of avenues. We...
Tell No Tales
First day on the ship. Hodge shows me around. Here’s the mess deck. Here’s your rack. Your workspace, ragged. Oscar flag hanging from the bulkhead. Your shipmates, Beltowski, Pierpoli. That’s forward, aft. Pronounced folk-sul, bosun. Watch your head! Months go by. We cast off. So this is the ocean. Get to work. Sign these papers...
Ways to Change Your Life
I could have a baby or I could buy a banjo I could write down my dreams each morning instead of eagerly surrendering them to the abyss of unmemory I could read the labels on food packaging buy organic eggs from happy chickens force myself to care about microplastics I could be Tiktok famous (if...
Sanguine
All animals have blood hearts Omnia animalia sanguine* corda All animals have blood in their hearts Sanguine is no longer meaty. We have squeezed out the blood. Lobbed off ventricles and arteries to leave just an outline <3 Our animal hearts once bloody / bloodthirsty now...
Lebanese Eggs
Click here to jump to recipe. Otherwise, notice the tippy milk crates stacked two-high under your five-year-old feet, the white chef’s apron knotted behind your neck, draping down past your shoes, between you and the oven door of the ten-burner stove in your grandfather’s diner, the two flats of eggs, thirty to a flat, ready...
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