I walk our high school track under the noonday sun as young Carter the Punter goes about his ritual in the end zone 75 yards away. I work where Carter is a student and venture outside whenever possible, the mountain air has a way of breaking my fatigue. Carter talks to himself as he stretches; his voice resembles a muppet and carries well. In good and ill-tempered weather, he will be here with his duffle bag of tools: a small pump, ten footballs, exercise bands, two pairs of cleats, and a …
I make my coffee in the dark in order to prolong the delicious weight of sleep. The sun will rise soon but for now a thin tangerine light glows above Flat Top, where pitched roofs jut from the skyline and the radio tower blinks with red devil’s eyes. Yesterday’s flowers, the first of late winter, have already dropped yellow and purple petals on the sideboard. I move slowly to keep my dreams alive in my brain. An email, there’s always a dream email, with instructions I don’t understand. An …
your hot curry breath’s got me in such a tither, ready to inhale and gulp you up—my new oxygen let us tiptoe through our floral saffron lawn float in our pool of chicken vindaloo on garlic naan floaties and even when this crimson spice bath begins to rub us wrong, i’ll peel your flaky rice-grain skin dig in so deep we become embedded in each other and we’ll construct our home with a paneer veneer cover our couches with crisp samosa cushions and sure our roof leaks yogurt sauce from time to …
iii. When we arrived, my mother was already dead. The smell was antiseptic and my senses were overwhelmed by the acrid and the fluorescent, the sound of sneaker friction against worn floors, the collaborative din of life-supporting machines. I carried a box of new ballet slippers, tokens to carry me into summer camp. She was covered by a thin white sheet, face turned toward us, hollow human shell without the mother force thrumming things along. iii./v. The look of death is shared. Our unique …
Strands of hay whirl away from the truck, wafting out, down, and over all things, lifted by the breeze from the rocking motion of the truck on the uneven road, wafting down to lay a golden carpet on the concrete, strand by strand rolling past beneath my wheels, the late fall light slanting through the cloud still in the air. I am encased in a world of gold dust and threads, thinking of all those who’d urge me pull out, speed up, and hurry past the steady truck driver …
We couldn’t find the labyrinth, which was maddening because I’d been there before and was convinced we were in the right place. Much of what I’d remembered seemed to have been drained or extracted from the scene. There was no more outrageous, biblical sea foam that had once claimed so much of the beach. The dozens of painstakingly stacked cairns previous wanderers had constructed for those after them had been disassembled or washed away. Most disconcerting was the total disappearance of the …
