Page 3 - Issue 161 News Today

The receptionist, Esther, was in a bad mood, and complaining to the dental hygienist about a string of canceled appointments. “Why can’t people just let us know if they’re not coming in?” she asked. “We only ask for twenty-four hours’ notice: it’s not that hard. I’m just trying to plan a day here, people.”

I wouldn’t know, but when I imagine being there in the roomwith the real thing, its many glowing painted sections are nearlyweightless, and they float, silent, barely held together by their frames,and in the darkness, in my head, they fold slightly, hinged wingsthat make me want to go in them, walk the green field, be amongthe crowd of devotees—which I am not, not Christian,

Can I interest anyone in the newspaper of my spirit? Feathers,today, it’s mostly feathers—once again these field reports from the interiorhave failed to document the wildlife rattling around in me,goings-on lost to the usual grammars of a Monday crowded with anxious thoughts. Nevertheless, as the drive-thru line at Wendy’s winds out from the parking lot, and drivers mug

After Robert Creeley Bitten night spilling sharps. Lowing clouds eye the Pinelawns of dead influences to me. I’ll never live in a house with a woman who writes under an uneasingly settling sun. Contrapuntal outruns cannons. Darkness thousand rounds us to bed. Love for one all my rest. My mind too a mangle is.

The two-edged sword of being human and knowing it: blades of grass never compare themselves to an oak or look in mirrors. I never love you more than when I watch you look at your reflection and relish what you see. Only a human would do something so dirty and shrewd and divine. When you touch me you turn me into rose quartz clouds, into the shadow of a hawk passing over car

Cropping the image I see how sparse the yield this year of further wearing—  I find my way there by fewer paths but know those fewer paths more intensely, the bits I have lost are not lost to the greater picture, and when I saw it closely, obscurely, or in panorama, I could see what would be hidden from me. A wasp’s single mud cell, the crumpled body of a window spider tapping

The woman we called Morning limped down Washington Street, asking for a dollar. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. Government wasn’t an enabler. No Narcan to resurrect zombies. Folks dropped, leaving brown puddles. Heroin ate people. Every day a little thinner, disappearing into clothes like ghosts. Till they were ghosts on Washington forever, their nothingness enough

We were in the jacuzzi when Speedoman entered the pool area and our lives. There were five of us, all sitting spaced apart, the warm water bubbling up to our hairy chests. Outside, it was gray and snowing, the roads icy. We came to the Ford Community Center in the heart of Dearborn, Michigan, every Saturday afternoon to work out—intense cardio followed by weight training—and

They talk around the horror. For as long as they can stand it, they talk about stamina, the races they’d been training for, about their weekly mileage, their best split. They talk about their favorite trails and how the foot-give, the quiet, the way the sun crested over the ridge each morning on their last pass brought them peace, accomplishment. A good sweat. They talk

The receptionist, Esther, was in a bad mood, and complaining to the dental hygienist about a string of canceled appointments. “Why can’t people just let us know if they’re not coming in?” she asked. “We only ask for twenty-four hours’ notice: it’s not that hard. I’m just trying to plan a day here, people.”