When the boy’s mother told him to at last get dressed for the pool party, what he heard was: son, revel in yourself because everything in this life is permissible. Beyond the pool, he found the boys gathered around the air conditioner’s metal cage, handing each other things to drop in its obedient fan blades.…
For all that she wants, Janie knows Mr. Neilson will never kiss her. He conducts. When he conducts, his hair whips, his arms fly through the air. His moustache glistens. There are dark rings in his pits. Janie wants to be the kind of person whose devotion yields dark rings. Her father calls this giving…
Find a pool of water. It should be still. Maybe in a hidden grove somewhere. Remember a person or thing is always itself and not something else. Now think about a glass. A flat piece of glass. Consider mercury, a type of silvering. Certain things do not have a reflection. Carpets, for one. Dark hallways.…
Song for the Barrio Swan
Marisol goes dancing on Fridays. She leaves at dusk, smelling of kiwi and tree branches, walking much taller in her black strappy pumps. She won’t come home until her heels blister. Later, she’ll say––These are my battle wounds, miren––as she shows us all that’s peeled open, what’s given way to the red tender flesh that…
Undark
During the day I paint numbers on watch dials so they shine luminescent, but when the factory bell rings, I paint myself for you. My teeth, my eyelids, my nails. The circle of my drugstore compact reflects the glowing pieces of me, the mirror a door I could slip through if I were just bright…
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