Ornithology 103
We came to study the seagulls. When our field trip to the sea didn’t pan out (budget cuts), we caravanned to the dump, fording through oceans of crud to see the […]
The Body
Human Co.
Human Co. is filled, as necessary, with thin, near-torso-less bodies. Graceful arabesques falling from the oval thumbprint of the head. One must imagine the curve of the ribs, the splay of the back; even, to some extent, the span of the shoulders. So much of the body has been given to the stage. Humans […]
Wheel of Fortune
This world contains many worlds. Why should the law of scarcity reign? Money is an odd commodity, a broken palindrome. I make it, I spend it, and, like a dumb squirrel, forget to bury it for winter. Memory equals intelligence for many species. Do you know where you hid that bone? I’m not you and […]
Serenade
That there should be ceremony. A way in to the photo album before sepia became de rigueur. That there should be upright collars, a flower on the mantle as a timepiece. In this way the flower does not differ from the camera itself, from the lucidity of the operative lens with its shuttlecock eye, closing […]
Shorelines
Whatever is the opposite of keening, that is the sound the waves make, trawling themselves across the long shallow shore in Ogunquit, Maine: home, in another century, to fishermen who built a tidewater basin, furrowing the soft marshland, digging a channel to give safe harbor to boats named “Susan Bee,” “Clementine,” and “Anna Mae.” In […]
Daphne on Being Wood
I never meant it to be permanent: this body-house of wood, this foliating iron lung, these brachia of branched leaves that were my exeunt and leave-taking. I did not intend to remain a tree forever: perhaps for one or two eras of Apollo’s high-octane testosterone, the nymph mania that sparks […]
Lizzie Borden’s Pears
In spring, the smell drove her mad. Those blossoms, airy as lace, stank of fish and rot and something else; she’d heard the neighbor boys snicker, passing by. She locked the casements until the white petals browned and fell, displaced by hard, ungrateful fruits. Then, the days were hot. She raised her bedroom […]
Illustrate Half This, An Upset
Fishing makes a cold verb, starts with air & winds up Underwater. What dazzles the fish – feathers, bright eggs— Herring leaping into nets. It’s royal, right? Soldiers hammering ships. Fishnets on a pinned-up lobster. If we go back a thousand years, More fish. Kings & in-laws. Brisk & salacious gemmy […]