I come before you to stand behind you and tell you something I know nothing about. — Traditional
My Buttermilk Girl
(Or: Why Love in the Moonlight Is Never a Good Idea) Delicate, exotic flowers are still growing in the gardens at the Duke Estate, although it’s a lot harder to…
The Scholar’s Stone
1Since I am now old and no longer performing any productive labor, you may well wonder how I am able to afford such a beautiful, rare, and valuable object as…
The Night Science
1. My Brother, Fire When he was a baby, my brother, Fire, was uncontrollable. He’d incinerate his diapers and make his formula boil in the bottle. By age three, he’d…
Number One With a Bullet
Introduction In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake declares that “as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the nature…
2,976 Vienna Sausages
My friend Plopman had inherited his optimistic, visionary spirit from his father, who had been able to see little iridescent and transparent winged things crawling up his legs . .…
Rich Bear, Poor Bears
“This is why,” Cynthia Van Der Well said, pouring her fifth glass of wine for the evening as she stared at the stuffed bears, “we should not have allowed the…
Soul Sleep
Being dead is not as awful as you might think, all things considered. The thought of being buried alive was my second-worst nightmare. I saw a thriller once, with the…
Dawn
He thinks: if someone could describe this scene, it would be stark and simple. In a house in a very old city, a city layered deep with murders and covered-over…
I See You, Too
You don’t know the world you live in. You think you do, but you have noooo idea. Beyond the depth of your living room and the bright yellows and muted…
A Walk Under Translucent Skies
There’s something familiar about this place. This was a strange thought, considering the sky was made of sapphire blue cellophane paper and the stars of gleaming aluminum foil. A casual…
The Flight
“Money in for the very first round of the second year,” called Simon, “come on, hands in pockets. But freshers” — he smiled his famous smile at the girl next…
Rita’s Finger
The groom’s mother fawned over her 25-year-old son. Rita McKay was dressed in a pale pink skirt suit, looking like Jackie Kennedy without the pillbox hat. She set down her…
Poems from the Baal & Ashtoreth cycle
1 You are the most extraordinarily beautiful woman with the elongate lines of an African sculpture, slats, cylinders, bonded blocks, corners knocked off and rounded.|Actually, you’re a black woman in…