Reading & Books

Again, an ousted child or orphan happens onto a den.
It happens then. Invitation by faun or badger to…

By Paula Bohince

We land in the aisles of British fiction
to soak in the air conditioning. Your fingers
play the spines…

By David Hopson

I was thinking of some of the messages Rilke will never receive: — dentist called abt your appt tomorrow…

1
Sunday      vellum tongues with words of prayer
Monday    messages from the unknown
Tuesday     how to…

The shipwrecked man creates a monarchy of one.

When he sees a footprint, he panics.

He has to keep…

The young man says, “Alan can 
do anything he wants”

“Not fly,” I say

The young man returns 
a puzzled look…

I realized I was Nel and wept
for the robins rotting inside me. I had not bore snakes
or roses made of cinders. I rose from bed
bored, snaking my way beneath
ashen men child-hungry
and respectful to thieves. I refused to fuck
because I was...

immacula immigrant entrepreneur good with numbers my grandmother down comforter vendor five flights of stairs off flatbush illiterate well into her sixties can you believe it was a patient preacher taught her how to read the king james thickness newly...

Reading a kind of  laborious
poem about rural things
and a horse is shot
for breaking its leg.
I still don’t get it.
Surely there’s a way
to heal a horse.
I text my friend
who is a farrier
(you know—
someone who shoes horses)
I say surely there’s a way
to...

In this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.

Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own...

I am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am...

you know I ain’t mess w/you ’cause of yo’ friends
wouldn’t have you caught slummin’
know you hood 'cause you said

I look the same
and I said
you look the same

and I said “it don’t crack, doit?
and you said “Uh, OKAY?”

that’s that thing right...