Patmos: Xora (old city) Unlock the blue door late on a warm night, step into a courtyard drenched in jasmine and lemon blossom. Breathe. These thick, white-washed walls are your refuge. When you open the door next morning in the blinding glare of the walled street, Yasas, good fortune on your head, you say to …
One We toasted to drinking like rock stars and partying like movie stars and girls with small noses and lower back tattoos. We tinked our glasses, tinked-tinked and tilted, swallowing the dread of love and loss that makes us tremble at the end of the night. The tequila went down like the Titanic, sending Rob …
They come to the water wearing the skins of their previous lives. Each step toward the horizon is a question. Each dip of the head, a prayer, to forget this life and remember, the way Indian children remember their previous incarnations, the names of loved ones left behind, to go back to the time when …
If I could see the Red Maple again near that street, I do not know what I would do. We are fathers and mothers forever leaving the children of our memories. I made full meals there. I slept in the warm water of the tub as if it were an orange colored womb. What I …
Café Verité by Denver Butson the man who just ordered a skim latte. and sat down by the window. is being murdered. by his ex-wife. but he isn’t even married. to her yet. she is calling him a liar. and a cheat. and beating her fists. against his chest. and clawing at his eyes. and …
I never tried harder than that to disgust you without even speaking— Cowered in the bathroom I saw our faults on the linoleum floor, slam-dancing. Our faults had their hands in each other’s mouths, they were picking teeth out like fresh flowers. I scooped all the molars into a towel, rinsed them in my bath …
My great-great-grandfather Enos Thompson, assassinated a high-ranking member of the Know Nothing Party, then retreated to California. My family said his stories of giant redwoods, painted deserts, and mountains so high trees wouldn’t grow made politics seem unimportant. Grandpa Weed was a certified chicken thief, spent 30 days (along with Uncle Morris) in the Crawford …
One half of the moon fell lightly through the window as night fell silent, and I felt oddly old and incapable of love, another gray February, afraid as I was to fall asleep to my own breath or bird’s song falling ever fair by some order no one understands, least of all me who feels …