The Rival

My mother got a flying baby. She already had four cats and two dogs. When I came in on Saturday, the baby was tied to a banister, flying up around the ceiling. Mom, you need to keep that ceiling fan off, I said. The baby smelled funny, its diaper was sagging and its skin looked loose. It had orange and yellow hair all over its hands. A baby is a lot of responsibility, Mom, I said. I snapped my fingers at the baby, trying to get it to fly down to me. The baby didn't even look, just kept fluttering its sticky wings and bumping into the walls. It doesn't look right, I said to Mom. I feed it every day, she said, and spray it with water, they said that babies need a lot of water. I asked my mom, Where's its bottle? She said, Somewhere, somewhere. She dug into the pile of soaking dirty dishes in the sink. She was wearing her t-shirt with the embroidered reindeer on motorcycles. Why are you wearing that? I said, it's not even Halloween yet. She fed one of her toy poodles something from the sink. Have you thought of a name yet? she said, I asked you for a name. I heard the baby bump into something in the hall, its wings whirring like a blender. The baby started to make a sound -- something between a toy fire engine and a bark. I think the baby's crying, I said. Oh, he will stop on his own, my mother said, he always does.

Crush


Smashed ice in a waxed paper cup.
One translucent pea hen flowing after
another, or an orange shadow

shifting on the baseboard. Orange
my safeword. Orange I said
Orange when we swam. My breath's

unreliable that way. Why is it
orange? he said. I wanted to try
something new. Do you like it? I said.

Curtains drawn, the day humming
outside like a fire engine on pause.
Orange ya glad to see me? The pea hens

trying to talk. Working on some kind
of clotted harp in their throats. Orange
I said Orange. I buy him a pile of them.

They disappear by the next morning,
leaving a smear on the chair. It's not
something I would normally

say, I tell him. That's why.
Corn syrup, then food coloring, two kinds.

from The Handmade Castle

Section 1. (instead of breaking their hands, one after the other, while someone tries to reach for the phone)

Tonight you make up a father, an ordinary, sad one, smarter than anyone realizes, who reads the history of the Quarter Horse over and over again, making pencil marks in the margins, who drives his 80's Toyota slower now, since his left eye got so bad; tonight it is this father who calls you, this father whose smoke-stained voice you hear by the window as pink light leaks from the satellite dishes cupped like ears towards the grimy sky, this father who sounds distracted, who pauses until you say hello again and this father who coughs twice as he tells you about the plane crashing, about the girl he can't remove from the wall.

Saints & Cannibals is back on sale! Sorry for the SNAFU

First Draft

How to Make a Person-Bomb
after Gloria Fuertes


Start in the backseat.
Add shoes with laces that trail.
And a broken knuckle.
A ring that keeps sliding off,
bracelets that catch on the furniture.
A stick of butter.
A stick of butter.
A cup of hot, black pepper.

Put it in the crosswalk.
Put it in the doorway
of the boarded up hotel.
Send it swinging in an empty schoolyard.
Give it a book with no pages, give
it a chair with a broken leg.
Show it how to teach a dog
to heel, then give it a talking dog
who says nothing but bark, bark.