TIMBER 9.2

the continuous efforting of it all or felt panic as one dropped into hard waters an apple falling from the tallest tree not that I’m suggesting you crane your neck no right in front of you the human gait is in fact a continually arresting falling movement merely the body...

trash on the train tracks / Steph finds a remote controlled / vibrator a cheap one / vibrating egg on a wire / she tries to touch us with it we scream Ryan trips / into the ditch / comes up / with a stray hypodermic needle speared / thru...

Believing he did & you will I asked the ground how it felt not being clean enough to hold the pierced balloons of breathless beauty snagged on the teeth of time. The sadness was pathologically red seeping up from the latest wound earth had just sustained. Standing there weeping like...

Doctors found four bees in her eyes eating her tears. 1. yesterday a black hole tomorrow a leak dragged out by his legs different news today a desperate nonsense deeply felt 2. my squalor is buzzing your stick candy is buzzing my sticky last year is buzzing your sturdy trunk...

Amphibious “ L’Siren ,” says the Frenchwoman, sliding a faux ivory bangle engraved with a mermaid on my wrist. I run a thumb across fin and scale until I come to her face: full lips, round nose, hair dreadlocked. I recognize her face, balance her many names on my tongue:...

1. Selfie What are you to do when you’ve spent most of your life primarily looking at one face, blemished, aging slowly but confidently, negotiating the trials (limited, one hopes) and tribulations, the glories of work, and love, and struggle, the visits to the farthest reaches of the world, the...

Platoon 3111's head Drill Instructor sat on a throne of foot-lockers in the middle of the squad bay. It was early in boot camp, before the days counted as Training Days, or T-Days. Recruits knew a lot could happen between T-Day 0 and graduation, but we still imagined every scenario...

You would only give me the toenail after I promised that I would not eat it. Plucked from your foot with tweezers, you lost the whole nail. It didn’t come off clean. Removed in painful shards, the nail bed beneath was revealed in such vulnerable pinkness that it felt obscene...

I’m scrubbing dishes in the orange evening when my phone throws a tantrum on the countertop. Here it is. Our president has finally launched the nukes. It’s time to shelter in bunkers we don’t have. Soapy water drips onto the screen before my unblurring eyes process the messages. The world...

Everett flicks a toggle, and the chain circling the thirty-two-inch bar jolts to a stop. Blue exhaust clears in favor of the syrupy scent of fresh-cut pine, its amber-black pitch everywhere: the saw, his used-to-be-white T-shirt, his jeans, yellow work boots, yellow work gloves, inside his forearms. Everett rests the...