Ask the Children

The youngest know. They know boot crunch from tank whir, missile whistle from rocket whine. They can count seconds to boom and brazen light bursts, the broken nights. They can nod off to anthems, echoed tunnel cries, or blast-bitten lullabies.   They can draw it all. There’s the house as it stood where it stood […]

The Pupil

Vowels in the trickle of a fountain, chasing mosquitoes over a fake pond: ‘A’, ‘E’, ‘AA’, ‘EE’, ‘EI’, ‘IJ’, ‘UI’… Bueno. De nuevo. The low drone of a plane, too close to the city on its way wherever, distracting, vuelos y viajes, here in the wet breeze in the wet leaves, anemic sun a tease […]

Just Girls

We were black and white girls with backyard passages so we              wouldn’t have to go around the block and knock, wouldn’t alert our brothers or interfere with their one-on-ones or alert              our parents making dinner, mine likely easy leftovers so our working mom needn’t fuss, hers likely grit and greens working              their organoleptic magic in […]

And Now

If butterflies could claw deep, draw blood, not just light and flutter, then they would be our conversations, our not touching, anchors as winds steal pages, flit and table tilt, our magnet energy and its skittish opposite; our breath unbreathed. All sleight of wing and distraction, the burn and zag turning heads despite bright blossomed […]

Oxygen

A machine detecting dye, the parrypadding into the room where he lies,wordless, feet stilled and arms bound.His glasses have been removed, his pockets emptied.  A life fills those pockets, the tokens and coins, addresses and appointments. Cash, still.Hints of barter expired.  I clutch his coat and dapper hat in my lap, breathing in deeply, as […]

February On the Herengracht*

Snow,not the kind that heralds frozen waterways,an eleven-city race on skates, but a changeon the cheek, a white sky smile.Slow mist and snow, gulls glissade low over the canals,grey-on-grey then gone. Curtainswide onto feathered white, lacingbranch by branch into city time. To be consumed by this paleportrait, where all is stillnesssave for our two forms, […]

The farm

In fits and starts, births and afterbirths,there was blood in the grass that year. Later, she would remember everythingbut the news; adventures need endings. The waitresses called her honey and pretendedto serve her coffee while everyone else pretended that things were as they always were, or at least,as they wished things had been and might […]

Cacao

There are mornings when the city still smells of chocolate, inchoate, industrial. No one notices. Yet many find themselves suddenly slipping, talking of other gone things, lovers or songs or shops, stopping by the bakery, fishing in their pockets or staring out the window, without knowing why. They might breathe in a little more deeply, […]

Scavenger Hunt

And at the end of the day we felt we knew him less. We’d started with objects and foibles gathering dust. The Oriental Lady with chipped fingers. The Empire Globe fallen on its axis. The Bronze Monkeys among more monkeys. The Wooden Boxes with their cacophony of cufflinks. The photos of smiling women. The pens […]