José de Diego y Martinez (1866-1918) — Georgina Blanes Mangual (1880-1982)      Once a year, I let a stranger take pictures of them. Supine, thin paper crinkling under my back, nipples erect in the clinical air, I watch my insides ebb and yawn across a screen. That’s me, I think, but it looks alien and grey, an illegible sea of ripples and blobs. Less like a breast and more like a void in deep space floating billions of light years away.   **  All other mammals on Earth develop temporary breasts for the singular purpose of nursing their young: bodies wax ..read more

José de Diego y Martinez (1866-1918) — Georgina Blanes Mangual (1880-1982)      I keep a coin on my desk of José de Diego. The coin, which commemorates the centennial of his birth, is embossed with his face. I rub my thumb over his raised features like a worry stone. Eventually, a gold coppery color starts to shine through the bronze.  José de Diego was my great-great-grandfather. According to the internet, he was also the “Father of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement” and “Father of the Modern Puerto Rican Poetry Movement.” These are some intimidating offspri ..read more

Often when I think of her, I think of her asshole. Rectum, sphincter. Or, as I put in an abandoned poem once, “blind ugly iris.” Thinking of an eye, trying to wrench my own eye somewhere more pleasantly metaphorical. Her asshole looked back at me as I wiped her clean, having just become incontinent, having just shat herself and the bed with its elaborate draped headboard and pink sateen sheets.   This may or may not have followed the first and last dose of morphine (her dry mouth begging for water). I have a hard time remembering, a hard time wanting to. The timeline, the details. Sh ..read more

I’m lying naked in the middle of my lover’s bed on a Wednesday morning. While he types away at his desk across the room, wearing the green robe I bought him, my legs are together: the left outstretched and the right bent just so, the knee cresting delicately over the other leg. My toes are pointed and I drape my arms in a way I intend to look effortless, one palm upturned above my head. Being of average height, I try to elongate myself. Is it possible to languish without an effort at elongating the body?  I recall a painting we studied in art history: The Grande Odalisque. The subject—a w ..read more

prepositions for elijah philip james shaw [ prepositions no. 1 december 2 twenty nineteen ] In the traditions of many, chairs are set and left empty for a patron, set for a particular saint a religion calls for in our most specific of moments, or for all our families’ departed—believed to be obliged to arise to our occasions. As a child I suspected there’d been too few of them willing to show up for all the requests being made of them. I thought maybe most of them we prayed to and for had never wanted to show up in the first place. Yet I remained believing in ones who try at moving on to ..read more

After so much nothingness, something had decided to place my consciousness back inside my skin. I could feel the hair on my forearms again. I could sense the living things around me. And I could remember them: my fingertips against the lukewarm grass, a whistle zipping through the air. The low rasp of my father’s voice. A lazy and quiet breeze. I opened my eyes, and boom, the year was 1995. A California sky. A smattering of clouds. Who knew how long I’d been gone or how I’d learned to jump time, but I had. And that was pretty confusing for a thirteen-year-old kid. The facemask from my football ..read more

September blizzard this Labor Day weekend, soaking me in visibility nihil, so what better time to build huge bonfires, burning up all the scrap wood from the lookout tower rebuild and old outhouses plus cubie cardboard and old romance and Elmore Leonard paperbacks as kindling because yes I’ve become a book burner in my pyromania though also too hoping my boss Jason will keep his word and give me the ‘$100 cash bonus’ (meaning from his pocket) if I actually get rid of it all and restore the butte to some semblance of nature. Just weeks ago flowers were in full bloom—lupen and indian paintbrush ..read more

My mom would not accept collect calls from prison. She would not accept collections of any kind. To her, collect calls was like the clutter of junk mail on the kitchen table. It was time consuming to read bills you knew you could not pay or speak to someone you knew you could not help. And she would not take us for visits, either. The only thing she would allow were letters. I learned early that words are expensive. Especially words from someone who has no contact with the outside world. So, I wrote. I wrote until it stopped feeling beautiful and started feeling pious. I wrote until I got bore ..read more

!10! “It hurts just as much as it is worth.” – Julian Barnes !10! The story goes that my maternal grandmother, Po Po, had her feet bound when she was a young girl in Beijing. The process was halted when they realized she would have to flee to America during the Communist Revolution.  But no, that doesn’t make sense. Her feet would’ve been visibly disfigured; she would’ve had trouble walking. Perhaps she was just a natural size four? • My mom had me when she was 42 years old, which is to say that she was preparing me for her death since the day I was born. It was less about her actual age ..read more

I do not have any kittens My government hates me My car is full of mold Sometimes it is too loud outside for me to sleep Sometimes it is too hot inside for me to sleep Sometimes it is too too for me to sleep I am always tired and I don’t like it I am always tired and I don’t like it and everyone thinks my tired is their tired but their tired is not my tired their tired is regular is human and I am a monster I do not read and that is someone’s fault (not mine) No one will wear cloth on their face so that I can continue being Flowers die (should be permanent) I don’t understand how cars work ..read more