zinc words & images

  • This, Partly

    Metallic sweat pressed your body and personified the heat, giving it the character of desire. Pluck a vein, an artery, one of the nerves that runs from deep inside my neck and down my leg and ricochet like a tuning fork on a steel beam. We’re marked with the pumping blood. My veins let me…

  • Tithing

    the eager man always officiates over the corpses littering the bridal highway lightening his heavenly load burdening the young woman who sees the magazine stand urges herself to abstain from the musical notes pressed so hard against her solarplexus that its breathing becomes her own and the hot sweeping air of its mouth envelopes her…

  • A Song is Not a Song

    All the high notes you loved before are sharp, reverberating in what is left of your brain. This thing takes no advantage only waits to lose space and die, unmasterfully on the loose ground of your foremothers. But, who knows where the cell divides. Scientists know the rna, the chemistry, but the spark of death…

  • Warning

    Sometimes I wonder, Virginia, why you told me the things inside me are transient, that all bodies are drawn to the dark soil. It fills my belly as it filled hers, its testament to misunderstanding and the witness of historic unraveling. Bade me put rocks in my pockets. Lift me to the arched back of…

  • April 30

    The soft touch of breast And the red bell pepper have in common summer, when both are discovered. Do you remember your neighbor when you were 11 And she 13? You could barely stand to look at her. So bright, like standing between the vast expanse of ocean between Honolulu and San Diego and the…

  • April 29

    I could fall asleep with my head bobbing like a novelty. i know it was you who took the branch and left it in my path, it was like you were saying something but also not saying anything. The greatest magic trick ever from the spoiled milk you turned to cheese to the harpsichord shirt…

  • April 28

    My opinions about the world are solid, but none of them reflect comprehensive reality. I never have had a conversation while watching a white-hat, beignet-slinger about the mastery of frying oil and what this spot looked like in 1620. I prefer a click on the vibrant light of false hope. Watching when love doesn’t manifest.…

  • April 27

    Puddled city cast in twilight Nighthawks converge in the night, watching the gutter-pools speak of love so bleak. All night pharmacies with attendant sinners see refracted stoplight glimmer stopping them at the auto-door and causing them to wait a minute more. Wet residue, rainbow-hued, parking lot tarnish dropping globes do concrete varnish. Couples of the…

  • April 26

    I’m pent up without words locked lip to lip calls and clicks crest my ears. I can hear for the first time. Like holding doors for tiny, intrepid octogenarians and visiting with ease, those names marked by a blue-capped pin. The memories enact your footsteps on the snake-like pattern laid across green summer grass. You…

  • April 25

    You left that note for me, a box of appreciations from you and 500 strangers visiting from each town with a logo’d baseball cap. Written was the relay of our first meeting. Demeanors are sometimes attractions invigorated by sudden recognition, all in the truncated five minutes afforded those with employee discounts. Depth doesn’t know alarms…