Middle House Review
"the edge of the world thinned into ghosts floating around in my mind. I still saw her. Her knees covered and caked with soil, knuckles scraped and torn, and next to her, a chipped spade as if missing a tooth."
"The walls were snug around us, five hard-luck girls sharing a two-bedroom apartment alone-together in a candy-bright city that made promises it couldn't keep. We’d all crept there, one by one from corners darkened by bruises and boyfriends turned pimp and families who confused identity with lifestyle."
"Next door to us Mrs. Bellard sat by herself drinking wine while her sons stared at the stars, and in the houses on the other side were old ladies living alone. Some days I played with Deanna, who lived a few houses down, but she was only there a short time before disappearing, like the Scotts and the Richards and the Wrights and the Bellards, whose house sat empty until my mother remarried and we left as well."
"I commend the cold for little miracles: the trees sandwiched in frost,
A dull night accosted by lonely lampposts. All this,
The man in a fur coat inherits. The trains hurtle & whistle their ways
Into eternity & forth. Undeterred, he stares further into every window"
"I like the snow
which falls over dublin
better than that
in toronto. here, earth
stretches like roots,
confused and striking
from the soil; the grey stain
of trodden pavements
churned against white. in canada"
"I’m quite drawn to specialized knowledge and to poetry that engages with the unfamiliar language and ideas that come out of that knowledge. As with the term “bloodmeal,” the language of the sciences becomes strangely evocative and weird when threaded into a poem. The same goes for details from history and myth, as well as artworks and popular culture. I’m very curious about a lot of things, and I like to get deep into the research. Whenever I come across a detail or fact that’s weird yet poignant, I go, that needs to go in a poem."
"One of the women on the shore hobbles into the Ganga on her crutches. Some people try to warn her. The river's running especially rampant today. But many devotees from all over the world are doing it. A quick dip and all your sins are gone. A quick dip and you can forget your past. A quick dip and you're blessed with forgiveness from God. I think it's too cold for a quick dip, though."
"she has descended
from dinosaurs
don’t think she doesn’t
know it
her free range feathers
spear-shaped
gold as yolks
tipped in black as if griddle singed
shine in the sun"