June 2018

In June, when the air was wet but the nights still cool, my father would take us up into the mountains before dawn. He followed a worn and tattered map drawn by my grandfather before I was born, seeking out places untread since the time of giants...

I’m at the gate that surrounds the Holofernes Geyser, staring through the chain link at the winding, iridescent pools in the dawn light, trying to remind myself that magic isn’t real. Magic isn’t real—the jewel-colored fountain...

Crab rangoons and tonic water Our mom told us, ‘spread good news.’ I look like the perfect daughter Yes, I look just cannon fodder All beheadings come in twos. Crab rangoons and tonic water Louisiana just gets hotter Hell is the color of an aging...

     Her mother had been a refugee, displaced by a tornado. Her father had been a scarecrow, attached to a post. They were both dead now. Mother had died from a respiratory illness, brought on by some subtle difference between the atmosphere of Oz...

modern oracle waits open-mouthed for supplicants’ offerings for fresh hearts to tremble as life’s balance is revealed a whisper of esoteric marks on paper slips the size of a pilgrim’s palm screen like a holy bush burning, but...

I wished we’d never come. I wished we’d never done it. I wished, in any case, we’d never honeymooned afterwards. Am I a cruel woman? No—there’s still hope. But still, I wanted to leave; I wanted to go back. I wanted to protest: I am a ruin. I am...

while we walk home from the bar in January. The moon is out. I watch it shimmy and I love it for that. You tell me that Venus doesn’t have a moon. Doesn’t have a companion in orbit. Venus came home empty-handed and pretends not to be sad about it...

All the world’s a stage. The phrase reverberated around the stuffy rehearsal hall, most ears seemingly tuning it out. He had heard the phrase uttered over and over in the past week. An unrelenting mantra meant to inspire. In truth, the words began...