Equinox —After Ted Kooser After days of smokeMy daughter and I Slip out into the fogDisappearing. It’s in The redwoods now,Her small hand Always knitting to mine,And I think about How we can’t see over the hills.And what we can see— Mount Tamalpais’ forestsBut not its bleached ocean side, Pines but not Muir WoodsAnd those last bits Of redwood groves,Birdsong chipping away  Gray dawn, bedded deer,Giant yellow slugs in sorrel. We can see the first glintsOn blue and teal bands of bay At the small point underThe Golden Gate becoming The whole Pacific, but not itsPouring out in some rush Of river or falls 10,000 yearsAway, from this vantage, Possibly…

Infrared —After “Bison Red Sky at Night” by Joe Don Brave, Cherokee and Osage artist. Joe Don Brave paints bison,a single white animal under a silver moon,red sky you could read as heat or life blood. It’s triggering to see the triangularpyramid of bison skulls, waste, mengathering photos, evidence of slaughter. Osage say they don’t know how to live,powerful men agents of destruction,unreasoned greed, a lack of sense, too smart to entertain alternatives.It’s too hot for me under the arborsome years, elders weigh the risk, fall out.  I want to ask Louis, my relativeabout Penn Creek north of Hominy,𐒹𐒰𐓀𐒰͘𐓍𐒻, when bison meandered all the way to Bone Lick, Kentucky.Jefferson, excited…

In the Image A small luminescent face pinbought at the last minutein Jerusalemfrom an artist ofno particular renown,her shop across the street fromthe small hotel I could barely afford. A tortured face, perhaps in ginger hijabor worn tichel or nun’s coif,its ruby eyes and smudged lipswith nose like a cross the artistcould not complete for weeping.A head pinned upon a crosspiecelike on some medieval pike. When I place her over my heart,I sometimes prick my finger,my blood the shadow of the crimsoncloth on which the head of thisthrice-blessed decapitant bled. Mara Gale Fein most often writes of loss. She has been recently anthologized in Look Away Now, a collection of…

The Paleoanthropologist I wish I could go back and meet my parents the year they met. Back in the 80’s when it was still ok to show up to homeroom wearing black leather pants and hair as wild and bright as a bougainvillea spilling over the side of a picket fence. I want to walk my mother home along Fourth Ave with my father beneath a full moon. I want to taste the humidity and listen to cicadas thrumming, see the tremor of the streetlight they kiss under. I want the three of us to get drunk around a fire and blast Raised on Radio from a big-ass boombox so that I can study their expressions through the flames as if they’d been preserved like…

Workwear One evening, by the tie rack at the Rochester Goodwill,(the now-defunct one once tucked into a cornerof the old IBM building), an older gentleman,wearing an oxford shirt and a bowtie, slowly approachedas I ran my fingers through that mop of silken tresses.“Seen any bowties?” he asked, pointing to his own.And when I said I hadn’t, he told me he workedat a local butcher shop, liked wearing tiesbut could only wear bowties. I nodded, my mindinstantly conjuring the hazards of a meat grinder.This was back when I resold men’s neckwearand checked the racks weekly. I knew my regimentalsfrom my repp stripes, my club ties from my emblematics,and my tartan plaids…

As Virtuous Men Passe Mildly Away —John Donne How easily the words roll offour tongues: death, dying. So long as we’re not the one who’s dyingdeath is purely hypothetical. But then you find a lumpin the breast, x-rays betray a growth in the throat. And out of nowhereDeath comes thundering astride his storm-black stallion, flagof his black country snapping from his lance, the four horsemenpounding in his wake. The sun comes under siege. Constrainedby iron bands of cloud, the morning light grows dim. The customarysingers, finch and sparrow, fall still outside your window,turkey vultures cast their shadows like a net across your lot.The eye finds darkness everywhere. And the tongue,…

How to Save a Marriage In the middle of making love in the afternoon,our new twist after forty-six yearsof marriage, which seems to beworking just fine, my wife says,“Did you take the garbage out last night?”which is like spilling a full beerinto a basket of potato chips or droppingyour keys, wallet and shoes in the punch bowl.“Yes, of course,” I say, trying to sound polite,not wanting the romance to slip awayinto daily conversation even though, in reality,I forgot to take out the garbage. My goalat this crucial moment is to stay inthis crucial moment which, in my mind,gives me permission to tell a little lie, see,and when my wife says,…

American Parable When I was ten, my father handed mehis rifle and said, “Go, take a hike.” I felt honored to be trusted,and stayed out all day to prove I could stay out all day. Latein the afternoon, I found myself standing on the mountain above town,and looking down I saw my father’s house, small and whiteon the outskirts near the railyard. Above me, the skygaped unbounded. I can’t say why I raised the rifle and firedinto the zenith of that void— the report feeble, the shot Dopplering off,swallowed by the silence that ensued. As I waited, the absence grew,and I began to fear the fall. Would the bullet return,and…

Updike and I Share nothing besides sympathyfor rabbits, his Americana not my own. I am the other kind ofcustard. Still, he lays a tender track of Ford, how we assembleit ourselves, and I think in other lives, we root for the sour stemtogether. Weaken our bonds to godly values, spread malaise likea layer of fat. I connect to his car and relationship to Christmas, theway his water trembles upward occasionally, like happiness. Atthe end of a rabbit, the century turns, and a boy suddenly learnshe has a sister. Acrylic kin, he promises to walk her down theaisle. The only thing they have in common has long gone, whichdoesn’t really matter.…

Outstanding She snorted crank on her pinky nail from a Carmex jar. They were still milk glass and I liked small things,so she said ten bucks and I meant full. She seemed trustworthy or her hair was niceor she looked me in the eyes more than twice. My hair, longer than hers, walked the stage withLoveliest Locks, dirt straight and clear of crank. She was so kind to take my money and run,each day that bad year, looking me in the eyes sort of smiling,sort of getting me here. Bradley David Waters is a California-based visual artist and writer of poetics, beyond-genre, and creative nonfiction. His work appears in DIAGRAM,…