Contributed By: Kevin J.B. O'Connor
So the birds turned to stone mid-air
and fell on the Earl’s head,
is that right? On the oxen’s rumps
and the palanquins.
Or was it the apparitions hanging
in the ice—
shagged osiers that struck
them dead,
a current livid among the roots,
transmogrified by the black sun,
itself frozen—like a dark cherry,
a chariot of unknown souls?
Return to table of contents for Issue 12 Winter 2018.
The nightingale is plucking out its feathers. So what if it pulls them all out? I bought you a flower. You said it had faded. It fades. So what? Are you done judging me or…
8:15 Splendidly beautiful day: intense sun and blue sky. Big cloud of smoke at town hall. Nine guerrillas on the corner. Indigenous Tzeltals all. Nothing on the radio: “They smashed the station to pieces,“ Dora reports.…
Love, I can’t own you, but give me lunacy, at least. Let my last lunacy be your legacy, at least. Don’t cut all ties with me. Let me hate you and you hate me, at least. What shame in me being with you? If not in public, see me privately, at least. Go ahead, believe […]
[Editors’ Note: An embryonic version of this piece, titled “Me, the Other,” was originally published in Spanish in a small circulation magazine. The following translation is by Michael Parker-Stainback.] Finally, after years of anonymous toil, my talent has been publicly recognized. And no one—literally no one, except my cousin Vincent, Professor Thaddeus Lazarus and I—knows it. He—Vincent—turned […]
from WITH THE MEMORY, WHICH IS ENORMOUS Main Street Rag, 2009 by Tony Trigilio AVIARY —for my brother I wanted to evict the pigeon who snuck in the living room window three weeks ago. Its fat tiptoe around the baby (not ours) laughing at the ceiling. I wish I could’ve loved the bird […]
