We took down the bird-feeder Because they told us to, even though None of the birds here are sick yet— We live in a period of excessive Pestilence, which sounds like a metal band Or the beginning of a tongue-twister Except it’s not so hard to say, Only to live in, red thread struggling Against passage through a needle’s eye, The space usually occupied by a rich man But they’ve all shot themselves into space, As if we aren’t already there; money In uncountable currency makes black Death savory, …
Life Lessons
Fixer Upper I’ve always felt a need to be a fixer. When I was young, and my father an alcoholic, I went to the library and discovered that making meals with carbohydrates would lessen the desire to drink. I made lots of spaghetti. Huge bowls of mashed potatoes. Freshly baked cookies. Then he wouldn’t come home for supper. Later, I’d hear him stumble home late at night, almost morning, puking in the bathroom, cursing up the stairs as he stumbled to bed. Finding apricot pits to cure Mom’s …
Micro Expressions
too busy living to hit record I dread the day your side-mouth impressions wry as a country song slip from my ridges and you with freckles real or imagined those teeth so honest eyes like a lightning strike a fox’s cackle, wicked and you the thinker in profile long fingers on knowing hands the whir-click of hidden clockwork I want to collect every likeness in my pocket an expression like coinage set in copper what if twenty years gone you are burnt …
The Fisherman’s Seven Dreams
In the first dream, Laxmatte, a fisherman who lives in a small cottage on the coast of Finland, removes Maiju, his plain, broad wife, to a red rocky isle in the middle of the Baltic Sea, where they remain for seven months. He pulls pink salmon in spring, herring in summer, white salmon in fall. On days after a good haul, Maiju chops the head off each fish, smokes their wet red bodies on racks, and wraps them in dried seaweed. Every three weeks, the fisherman and his wife bring the dried fish to …
Wild Dogs
On an afternoon walk, a cold wind went through me like a shot (whiskey, brandy, something dark) and he came to me, my grandfather. Winter like a dog at my fingertips—my first dog, Cochise, gorgeous, gentle, fur like snowfields. After Cochise died, my grandfather sat me down on the porch and said, “Everybody lives, and everybody dies. It’s called the circle of life.” And it made so much sense at eleven, …
Dislodging Fish Bone
When I was a child, I swallowed a bite of fried catfish whole. A reckless pluck of my chopsticks in a hungry and juvenile daze. It was momentarily joyous — the taste of hot salt, of nước mắm and crunchy fish skin, the fat faltering under the snap of my teeth before it melted in my mouth. Then, I choked. A barb of bone, I’m sure no bigger than my thumb, lodged itself in my throat. I panicked, staring at my mother across the table. There was a messy string of Việt and hasty shakes of the head …