the new flat doesn’t smell like anything, not fresh paint, or cleaner, or previous tenants. never before has dust taken so long to settle. i’m trying to stay here, grounded in the scentless, untouched quiet. but all this kind of moon ever does is throw its many-shadowed blue arms over the floor and, presently, my legs. it is the same moon. then there is the same brick. concrete before […]
Approximation The grandfather points out the witch at the market who comes to buy mushrooms and stare at postcards. She touches the sand dollar wind chimes, retracting her hand as the dry bodies musically crash. She strokes the sharp scales of fish lain in shaved ice, tries to discern the words caught in their gills. She has forgotten the art of existence, the […]
All day I curl up against the wall with black coffee, reading your old copy of Dorian Gray. I wait for December dusk, the top side of the feather duvet frosting my fingertips. Hiding away, I carve this trench in your room, persistent as rain. I push past gossip murmured by these walls, of who else slept in this bed that now holds my body’s shape. […]
Rain taps on the tin roof and I am in an unlit room not thinking of you. The air is cold, not like winter; it feels like your arms when they’re not wrapped across my ribs, your hand curling next to my lips, catching my more quiet breaths. 1:24 AM – the clock sits on the table next to the right side of my bed, where you slept. […]
I forget my reasons for staying, saying instead it’s what’s right– wrong, again. Again, I swallow it all: the anger, the regret. But it won’t stay down, as I do. It rises, likes the hot air you speak, corrodes the ceiling, takes my breath, leaves me gasping, choking on what you could not swallow. The indignant, after all, have no room for their own mistakes. […]
On Preparing For A Date I Don’t Care To Go On I debate with myself how to dress: casually, so as to hint at my lack of interest; or with care, to show him the shape of my body — the one he won’t be touching. Rachel Nix is from Northwest Alabama. Despite an irrational fear of frogs, she’s declared herself pretty content with living in the boonies. […]
high jump a copperhead chase cows cross country carry a dead skunk down the grassy lane throw up at the finish lose another race with death to your grandmother’s house fumble the snap you got nothing hum baby hum throw your father a curve put your dukes up circle the room make a free throw the crowd goes wild Barry Basden lives […]
They Say You Finally Have to Forgive Everything My uniformed father’s smile resembles the Mona Lisa’s, as unknowable to me as ever, his cheeks rouged like some downtown whore’s by an assistant in the backroom of the All-American Studio 40-odd years ago. They say there may have been another woman and a child–my half-sister. Still over there somewhere. I’ve found out things, but never a hint about them. I take […]
Awakening to Mourning “There’s nothing good about goodnight when it means goodbye.” ― Jeff Thomas Dad worked at the Atlantic-Richfield refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. On the morning of August 16th, 1963, when I was thirteen, he left for work before I awoke. I never saw him again, except in photographs and memories. Neither of us knew that last “good-night” was our last. There was an explosion at the […]
Listen with your grownup ears. The night may speak to you with silence. The silence of leaves turning. Of a spider’s patience. Silence abiding. The moon shrugs off its silver stole, bright paradigm to let it go— loss, dependence, fear—to take the stars as your guide, the cataclysmic births and deaths, the shy-of-everlasting light, the fatal strength to face the end. We’ve changed since we were children. How many faces […]
Melancholy Hyperbole 