THE RAVEN Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some...
LA ESTRELLA When Polaris falls, my grandmother will mourn in the center of the earth, her grief a giant telescope expanding through mantle, lithosphere, crust— a grito. In her hand, a mirror of polished obsidian— lava’s reaction to water. In...
PRONE, NOVEMBER Just your slow, pink movements near the doorway. If there were fields, they’d long ago rolled back in agate bliss. Until you were indelible, a dahlia. Bale of hay, almost made for a woman bent over. Her pale sweet hedging (which, in...
PRECIOUS Bring me sackcloth and oleander. Break out the shotguns. We’re going to town. Changes in the weather tracked on smoke-streaked yellowed windows via crosshatches...
L.V. WOMEN The Women wear their hair like a blonde ballet trained to perform each golden strand sun-bleached and chemical-precision, in perfect position. The women wear their skin unnaturally tight dry and porous like the concrete surrounds,...