The cats in the neighborhood—strays, gray as the gauzy in-between of dawn and sunrise—lounge open. October, and if they know winter’s coming they don’t show it. I looked for them the first months I noticed, checked beneath the car before driving wherever it was I felt meant to go, and, now, no: the car is black. Nothing is an omen—not… Read more →
Weston Cutter
domestic conversion scale
between the everything that will be forgotten + all that will not I live with my wife in a house big as I wished my fists would get when I was sixteen + my anger a fish I couldn’t catch or count enance, say living’s any -thing other than learning to be the river that doesn’t scream at each littered… Read more →
Encyclopedic
Was the time I believed a tree the proper home for my lust + hope, not time but era maybe, epoch, spell of years in which I’d at night climb into limbs which overlooked a baseball field I never played on as a kid + wonder what would happen next while the stars mapped the nothingness above. I’d never seen… Read more →
Playing Dead
To avoid being shot, my uncle, having hidden a Pole in his grandfather clock, rolls into an open snowy grave, lies face down. He holds his breath while Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldiers prod his leg with their guns, then disgruntled, shrug, swing their guns over their shoulders and leave. He opens his eyes. Couldn’t they return and kick him in… Read more →
Mahogany Box
The funeral director lifts sealed ashes into flecks of sunlight, knows he’s just performed a small miracle, turned our mother into a well-made box my sister and I can drive home in the front seat of her convertible bug. In life, she was never that easy. He asks if we’re okay, the way we stare at it, as if it… Read more →
Catch and Release
The gunshot echoed through the woods. Connor whirled around, his fly rod smacking against the tree branches. He was well downstream, but he was still in the woods that belonged to Montfort Farm. The shot had come from the falls and the pool that Connor had been fishing in. A posted sign on a nearby pine tree glared yellow, a… Read more →
The Alien Chose He, but Now Wants to Be a She
He likes lace—the way skin shows through no matter the color—a kind of unnatural camo. The permanent She, the human She is inconsolable. The alien asks questions to puzzle piece the grief. Her face is a storm cloud and She can’t formulate. It’s no secret. No matter the pronoun, he is neither a he nor a she. Her mind on… Read more →
Here Is What’s Left of Lake Bonneville
She is determined to see. Lock the creature in a still, share his looks with those who’ll listen. She takes a handful of diced tuna. Dabs the juice from the tin can on her collar bone. The lake is saltier than the sea, a pH between toothpaste and milk of magnesia. Salt can’t be destroyed—won’t dissipate or burn—all that can… Read more →
Today I am a neighbor in the aisles of the store where just
Last week I walked right past my mother’s Twin sister who does live On the same hill in the same city and who sometimes I do See, but this was the first in the grocery, the one I prefer. This Is a strangeness. Living in Midst. My mother’s twin sister Matters in the mirror: her face The word wish but… Read more →
Hansel the husband he
says he’s hers. Happy at home, performing small chores, she washes white sheets. He helps with a hammer. In the middle of this who knows. Read more →