Issue 164 News Today

      As if nobody heard in the heart’s crypt the bones of the barbarous bird, nobody is nobody. Nobody the senator of suspenders. You are nobody, hat of receptions, and you, medusa hat, your elusive mercy conspiring with another class of nothing.

For an unlimited MetroCardor green juice cleansejust a chorus chanting your namewhen you walk into a roomthe mood is moonlit & interioryou prepare monologueson ethics & speak theminto your fan’s whirwhile in the corneryour archetypal parentsmumble about wasted youthyou don’t need a therapistonly belief in an impossible causelike the gods you sufferfrom pride not shameyou walk

The day my father died, his favorite flannel shirt held my mother’s hand, listened to her waterfallof memories. His trousers tidied the bedroom and the rest of the house. My father’s shoes weredancing in the closet; his choir of socks chanting in the top dresser drawer. The Polish magazinesand newspapers on the bedside stand whispered where he’d stashed extra cash. She was so

After my father fell through a loose brick in the parapet of a Rajasthan fort, the wires stopped, so I began planning my return home when my computer science professor said, Go see Exxon Singh. Singh gave me a below minimum wage job in a gas station by the brook, and I liked it: filling up SUVs for ruddy suburban moms with their children in cleats; executing the last drops of

We had trundled into Concord after a long drive from New Hampshire, and after a tour of the museum, some victuals and ale at a local tavern, and a frantic tour of Walden Pond, I went by myself to Emerson’s house while everyone else traipsed among the tombstones at Sleepy Hollow. The house was closed for tours, so I circled it and marveled at its white frame with black

Sometimes, when I wake in the middle of the night, I think about the time we convinced ourselves a mountain lion lived in the field behind our houses. Remember the sticks we found cracked in the grass, the paw prints leading to the creek? 

After I become a ghost, I decide to haunt my ex-husband. This is not as vindictive as it sounds. I bear him no ill will. I merely wonder what it feels like to be him. You see, my husband is a man, and I had been a woman. I am curious to try on a suit of flesh with new bits and bobs in it. And because we were once physically intimate, it would not be much of a violation to

I had coffee with Brodsky in a Janiculum barI didn’t know English, he didn’t speak the language of CervantesWe could barely understand a damned word He ordered a hard-boiled egg sandwich while reflectingUpon the innate clarity of the Roman ruinsAt least that’s what I deduced from the way he was runningHis ideas like a razor across the face of a boyThe clowns are destroying the

You scrub all the checkered, tiled floors of the Catholic school on weekends to pay off suspensions. You take out the garbage while priests smoke on the balcony of the rectory next door. One priest has a porn mustache and a lisp. One priest is an ex-boxer with dementia who practices his golf stroke in the parking lot. One priest has a secret boyfriend named Bruce and steals

That was the winter we discovered how filthy we all were. Defiled by toxins and microscopic debris from our food, air, clothing, shampoo, and perfume. It lurked in our eyeshadow, sectional sofas, and wall paint. Infused our dish soap and radiated from our iPhones. Clung to our painted toes when we walked barefoot in the tick-treated grass, sifted through our vacuum filters and