after Eric Baus   I was saying lily pads float without roots   and my son notes  I’m explaining things I don’t know  he laughs and I sense ++++a…

  Having settled I had to be down with the man who taught me   to understand the geologic scale of things. The man   who made me— see that?…

  dilapidation on the lawn we watch without sorrow; a chair, perhaps is the irretrievable earth   appraising, I think, this came from my father’s country where bricks are the…

  Your house is a room that follows the sun, changes constantly like light-sensitive glasses. On the hottest days, the carpet retreats and a low vinyl tide creeps in. You…

  At the funeral, they sprinkled grains of dirt into my palm, but I saw no point in throwing them into a hole that could never be filled. The only…

  There were, of course, the doctor appointments you accompanied me to, after repeatedly finding blood in my urine—fearing it   was a symptom of something worse lying underneath. That…

  here / i am not his image / & i envy it / i shut my eyes against what is left / the crackling softness of life / like…

  1.   Like one of those bubble-makers spewing drooling chains from balconies during Mardi Gras parades, I am churning out his cells as we speak. Some of the bubbles…

  I try to count the things she can’t   the vine in the mustard yellow bowl left in the water that couldn’t be drained   the tiny grapes I…

  One fortune teller says someone could walk around with a gun, shooting into the air and the bullets would not strike a living soul. Another says she invited a…

  It was raining when the candles finally came out smelling like dish soap. The restaurant was empty so Damien and I scribbled in our notepads. I’ve worked at so…

  An Elvis impersonator was invited to give a one-day graduate seminar at NYU. During the talk, the impersonator demonstrated such techniques as the knee drop, the one-arm windmill, and…