very small dogs

Dwell

2008-11-15T07:52:00.001-08:00

It was that where the room was a lake, sandy miles out. The walls might have contained it, but only inasmuch as they make the story, the frame, the treeline god could have drawn. He left the water, she sitting there, through the back door. Outside was a wild—he imagined her saying, See you later, and, This sun on my arms just might be everything.

Medial Moraine

2008-11-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

He was hungry enough to check the box of year-old cereal. Sorry, it said, a note taped to the back. He heard the sound of the cat sleeping.

Argot

2008-11-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

The mice fought in the ceiling, squealing in rage. Sure it's not rats? he said. She plodded through her novel. Rats would sound like cats. Cats like elephants. The rain in its waves seemed white and holy.

Nov./Requite

2008-11-09T14:42:00.001-08:00

How do we not have time to savor it? she said. There were gunshots outside; the sky seemed in a shade of brown. Whatever the fever he'd been suffering burned in the top of his head. He would have rolled in the street, hunger and hope.

Rose

2008-10-29T07:43:00.001-07:00

The outdoors was floss, gray. In the outer field a sheep stood by a tree, feet in wet leaves. They were in their room, spread on the bed. Things rose and fell--he rose. She had two thoughts: bloom, time. She rose.

Diamond, Hope

2008-10-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

The day was short enough that he met her in the floodlights of the monument. You hear? she said, glove against his forearm. Yeah. The bluest stars shed their rinds.

Incorporated

2008-10-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

His hands were covered in correction fluid, blotched white to the wrists. The man at the next desk watched over his computer screen, speaking slowly into the phone. With each jab of the brush, the photograph withdrew. Business proceeded.

Rest

2008-10-20T14:30:00.001-07:00

There was a graphic of it bouncing off a log and hitting a man in the forehead. No blood though, she said. Says to wear gloves. He walked across the lawn, set it on the fallen tree, watched the butterflies warm in the mud.

A Brace Is Not A Couple

2008-10-18T08:26:00.001-07:00

At the back of the store, beneath shelves of porcelain cats, were bags of confetti. Some look like guts, she said, and red spaghetti. He wouldn't make the obvious rhyme, though he saw through her eyes the rising birds.

2008-09-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

Thomas Spande, Abstract, 2008

10 Thousand Things

The man moved over the city like a small dog, heedful in scent and strikingly gray. With each step his palms signified old men and children, their stoops, held at the center level of circulation.

2008-09-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

Christine Buckton Tillman, sculpture

Dr.

If he could, the world would be ordered of unbroken spines, neat teeth, and illustrated hearts. He would wear on his forehead a reflector, and her eyes would be stories of sandy rivers.

2008-09-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

Kathy Fahey, Timber Valley, 2007

A few weeks ago, Linda Franklin and I collaborated on a live reading at Minas Gallery called Maps and Birds: Getting Home. Visit Linda's blog, BarkingLips, to see the fruits of that collaboration.

2008-08-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

Peter Schmader, Darwin Gets His Props, digital photograph, 2008

Scopes

Charles walked with the green light of the parking lot, Slurpee-fisted, great discovery in the nut of his head. But Emma, he said, my hands, they're so chapped and broke. It was true, the things he'd hold, chipped, stained in laboratory blue. She only shrugged, fading across her shoulder, all the boys on her guitar.

2008-08-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

Luca Dipierro, from I Just Put My Name In My Books

Occupation

She said, You look thin.

To what question she addressed, he--his red sweater on the bright day--couldn't guess.

2008-08-12T14:40:00.000-07:00

Robert Sparrow Jones, The Boat House Folly, oil on panel

The Buddha

On your arm, a rubber band. Reminds you: don't look; accelerate; remember. She carries nothing in her purse, the tender, pretty emptiness of her mother.

2008-08-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

Dana Reifler Amato, In Potentia 1, 2, 3 (triptych), 2006, oil and ink on paper, collage

Geist

Her house wasn't made for living but as a district of worship. Stones, cups, branches of coral, they were made to point to her. He swallowed three times, air of brick and shifflera, an occupation, staging, organization of his lungs.

2008-08-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

Megan Hildebrandt, If you were modest, there was a certain art to hanging out your laundry, 2008, gouache on bristol

Invoice

I haven't said. At night it's like a silver cloud. It spins fast and you rush away, leaving my quiet hands. In the morning, color--magenta and iodine--find a way back in. You know, all your cuffs know, the loosely threaded hems.

2008-07-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

Denise Tassin, Doodle Top Green, work on paper

Green

He didn't know about the moon, its cheese. I'm so damn dumb, he said. He knew about this: her dress.

2008-07-28T12:48:00.001-07:00

Micah Cash, Treeline, 2007, Sumi ink, beeswax, and oil on paper

Cradle

It was rock bared by rain. Here, she said, indicating a slot of the thinnest soil. Do we sleep here? The red valley, like the draft of her hip, startled him from below.

5 Lines Baltimore

2008-07-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

A warehouse slid into the street, shuffle of yellow brick beneath the stoplight, no cars, but in the stone a man's cane, a gull's blood.

From the rich wood of the coffined attic the bats decanted, circled the turrets, a mugger with one eye rolled on the sky.

He walked beside the red pole, deep cut, black line.

A box of toys blew over, rain whipped the porch rail, a boy skinny and wet fed his cat through the window screen.

The steps were white cakes, green roses of beer bottles and dead flowers, a woman feigning sleep on the sidewalk.

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Fri*nd / B**k / Alpabt

2008-06-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

His eyes caught the passing of a bus, orange and broken white, and in a passing moment he left the stage. His hands described a guitar, eyes a bus.

She holds to herself a weed, pulled from the grass. Will you? she says. The weed asks her skin a question he couldn't have fixed.

In certain houses the lights were doubled, late city. She wouldn't have been there—the paling sidewalk—except for the voice: daughter? daughter? She folded her hands, nearly folded.

His glasses are televisions of her, even as he watches his hand. Go home? he asks, but she's already there.

Wait, she said. She was surprised how easily the knife passed through the apple, dull knife, red apple. Wait, she said. The sun pierced the door, family in the drive.

An ant began from the linoleum, crawled past her elbow, shoulder, to the clouded ceiling. She stirred her pot, focused on a dark fog. The ant reached the bulb, vaporous and warm.

When he parks the car, he will not get out. The motor will fall away, snow on the windshield. He'll sleep, then and inside, all the hearts on the block neatly typing.

He is clear, it'll be that metal, no other. It is like a dog: blue, heavy, patient. He pays, and the man at the register—what is it?, his eyes silver filling.

She turns away, one black heal, curled ends of her hair. Her smile is fixed—screwed, small. But then the sun declining, orange and cool, her palms find his eyes.

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Download a formatted Word version of Fri*nd / B**k / Alp*ab*t. Fits on half a page of typing paper. Print twice on same sheet, cut in two, and give one to a friend!

Menlo Park

2008-05-10T10:18:00.001-07:00

He gave her the light bulb, the glass gone pink over the years. I can drop it? she said. He nodded, and she held her hand from the window, the traffic moving stories below.

Oglala

2008-04-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

If I were to die…. she said. She left it at that, measuring the table with her arm, ribs to fingertip. He considered that future: like tall grass never stopping waving.

Lease

2008-04-17T11:15:00.001-07:00

The wall had 4 switches in some arrangement of off and on, a single light. Click! she said. From the dark, she laughed. Click! she said again, but there was just black, in some arrangement of silver.

Before His Old Dad Had a Chance to Shoot the Entire Pack

2008-04-15T11:49:00.001-07:00

He made a choice, the red dog. He lifted it into the cab of the truck and drove home, nose in his lap. When he opened the screen door, it trotted inside, past the wife, kids, out the back door. It didn't bark, it hardly ate, it never slept. It lay curled in the sun, a ripening tomato.