“Cold Salad,” “At Shore” and “Sightless”
In a cold winter thought
I grabbed the earth by its head of trees
and ripped upward to free the firmament
beneath.
No earthworms or other secrets.
Human figures entwined
in angered roots.
Extreme Vetting
Livia Holban arrived at the Seattle Immigration Court that morning determined to fight like hell for Félix Dominguez’s children. Sixteen-year-old Cruz and thirteen-year-old Clara Dominguez sat beside her at the counsel’s table looking terrified at the prospect of being sent to Honduras, a country they didn’t even remember. At the government’s table, Immigration and Customs Enforcement trial attorney Josh Henderson appeared relaxed, as if he’d already secured the kids’ deportation.
Heat Wave
Gooooooooooood morning Woodfield! This is Kap Freeman with your drive time weather update. It’s gonna be HOT again today! [cue: sizzling bacon sfx] Mostly sunny with a High of 92, heat indexes creeping into the triple digits. Continuing into this evening with tonight’s low only getting down to 81. [cue: loud barfing sfx] Then HOT again tomorrow!
Breeze
The headland rises before the horizon like a giant lion’s paw, sun bleached and golden. Morning mist lifts above it in a soft mantilla of grey gossamer. You can just hear the breakers over the heavy equipment, the banging of gears and the blades of the bulldozers scarring the earth.
Keep Going
It’s October in British Columbia and unseasonably warm. This means it’s also hot in the cabin of the twin-prop Cessna carrying me northwest, so I twist out of my sweatshirt and squirm in my seat to find a comfortable way to sit. No success.
I’m on assignment for Outdoors, going to interview Diana Li at her vacation cabin up north.
Onslaught
You are moving forward! You are moving forward. You’re cruising down the road in your jeep, on the way to work. The leather seat is cool beneath you; the world that’s passing by is overcast, but the yards and flora surrounding the nearby houses are almost a fluorescent green. There was a thunderstorm the night before.
How We Got Here
We danced on my porch on the night I buried my dad. My feet were bare against the weathered wood, smooth under my skin. My dress, black and wrinkled, shifted in the cool night air and I remembered my father holding me up to the sky above his head. My arms outstretched, face toward the sun and flying, flying.
Twisting Time
JENGA, yes, JENGA and rain. Both are safe for all ages, right? At the beach, sheets of rain rather than rays of sunshine coating the beach. JENGA! Throw in a slumber party game, a few choice words, a little alcohol, nothing too severe: Pinot Grigio, and wait. Now add a little, no, a lot more rain, bingo! Problem solved, right?
“A Walk on the Edge”
Let’s go to the beach today
It’s closed, I know, the Great Highway, the great expanse
But I know a way in-
I’m a scientist.
I’ll show them my credentials, say you’re my assistant
We’re here to study the shoreline, what’s left of it
“Up & Down Or Cutting Across Chess Boards Which Aren’t Best Metaphors, Hear Songs Of Our Earth While You Can” and “End As Beginning As…?”
Just as Technology
has shifted from
being a vertical —
organizationally
in a stack above or
below other usual
equal silos
“Amazon Burning,” “Slow Creep” and “So Long”
I will never see your secret spaces
listen to the bold songs of birds
or the screeches of primate tribes
in trees along slow muddy waters.
Nor will I spy the silhouette
of the silent jaguar’s shadow
“A Sestina for Turbulent Times”
Our kids march in the streets for Climate Change.
They’re chanting we are running out of time
disturbed by watching all the rising seas
from hurricanes, huge fires, torrential rains.
Their fears and tears give me a bit of hope
that our vast world will flourish when I’m gone.
“Prisoner Earth,” “Suffocation” and “Melting Wax”
I served 20 years 4 months 3 days
for a theft I didn’t commit.
Solitary. Abuse. Neglect.
Suffering. Shame.
Victim of mistaken identity.
Suggestive questioning. Self-interest.
Gross negligence. Prosecutorial misconduct.
Something Blue
Only the bride was still.
The bride, LeighAnna Hope Camden, sat on the floor of the church dressing room in an avalanche of white. She had yet to put on the dress. The slip alone was thirty-eight yards of netting covered with a fine batiste. Batiste, Bastille. LeighAnna wondered if the netting was fomenting rebellion.
Esperanza
Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed that if she confessed her love to her best friend, her life would leave her body: she would move on. This would cause her best friend great pain, and to save Artemio from hurting, Esperanza suffered the pain of never telling him how she felt.
The Snitch: Kelly
Kelly couldn’t remember the last time she drove a car. She didn’t take the driving test until she was in law school and she had nearly failed it. Now, she was on the far eastside of Harlem at a cut-rate car rental place that looked more like a chop shop than a legitimate business. A friend had recommended it. She sat in the driver’s seat of a small, battered car and listened to the attendant explain its basic functions.
Able Archer: Distant Early Warning
Major Powell had agreed to take photos of schematic diagrams of the SDI satellite systems. Dubrikov gave him a Minox B camera to shoot the plans. Powell had special plans created by the technical team at Langley that would photograph clearly on the tiny spy camera’s film. The images had to be clear enough for the Soviet technicians to be able to read, but not so clear that it looked like Powell had had time to set up a photo-shoot.
“We Take Our Color From The Mines,” “The Sea Was Never A Friend To Us” and “We Are Forced To Face One Another”
We take our color from the mines;
A frost of ash atop our coarse dark hair.
With brimstone flecks in the linarite of our
eyes, We see what lies in darkness—
Black holes to hell.
“Binge-Watching a Dream,” “To Tell the Truth” and “The Moment and the Sequence”
When he awakens, the dream tucks itself in.
At bedtime, the dream starts the night shift.
And so
Inside the lazy contraction of slumber is an energetic stretch.
“the colonel,” “hunt simulacrum (Iceland 2040)” and “Hastings (1060/2018)”
was in high dudgeon the colonel yelled
lying flat your pug-rasps in
in petering
juxtaposition of stuttered blasts
out get out
“Infinite Affair With Air” “Love Letters” and “Fly Ball”
You are this
which is not
that,
that
which is not
this.
You owe such and such
to whoever and whom,
“This Tree,” “Death Dream” and “Society”
I stop walking,
and contemplate
the way the thin
arm of this tree
once bent upward,
before stretching
out over the river.
“Cactus,” “cutlet” and “pumpkin”
I wait for a sign that you need me:
a wilting arm, dry soil,
but you give me nothing
so I trickle water into your mouth.
Just enough to tame my own thirst.
The Corpse in the Woods
Marli finds a corpse resting at the bank of a river in the middle of the woods after school. She almost doesn’t see it hidden amongst the brush and the moss, but the dingy gray color of its sneakers sticks out underneath the vibrant autumn leaves. After cleaning off her Dana Scully glasses – and squinting for good measure – she’s certain that it is a corpse, and not a fresh one either.