A Small Act of Devotion Spoons disappear from the kitchenand bend behind bedroom and bathroomdoors; watches and rings walk themselves to pawnshops, obsession pokesout the eyes of pigeons, arms— vasespierced by hypodermic stems, and tormented flowers. It is 2 AM and the only lightis a bright orange blister that burnsin the living room. An omen in the inebriated dark A lit cigarette hangs in my brother’s mouthlike a child from a tree. I am the motherwho says, do not fall. He is neither asleep nor awake. His head, a skiffthat rocks in a sea of coagulated tar, his slouchedlimbs, splintered oars. I sit beside him the moon anoints his face,…

Voyage of the Damned Gone the hair and the cross around her neck.The specialists have sent her back home. Two months since we’ve tried this.She can’t wait to be seen,consumed by something human,by desperate eyes and a prodigal tonguecalled to circumnavigate the sores on her thighs,every lip tanged with sulfur and smoke.   Looking up, I remember waiting for hoursin a line with other children,to pass beneath the gaze of the Pietà,the blindness that questioned death’s beliefin itself. Hers is not that gaze,though also of beauty making a promise to pain.   Every one of her hours nowhas been paid with ten in a pale blue smock,The tap water tastes…

The sound of stars crumbling without any malice/ In a corner of the universe… –Thomas James There’s no conclusion to what one feels: I wanted to marry an absence, my one brother said, cotton-mouthed with the roiling confusion of surf and its white-water time-rush, fitted for despair. Not the family theater of  red-winged boats pulling at this paper continent ahead of us. Not the thousands of miles of sleep like the ocean’s inexhaustible will, her unfailing pull from shore…hook, line, and sinker, I mourned all the King’s  horses and all their men galloping away with you. Nothing coaxed  passed remorse, nothing but that heel of anger, the heroin head to…

My Student’s YouTube Essay Alina’s voice is a white bird,claws skimming English sentences, A bit breathless after a gauntletof bombs in Bakhmut, a tent city by the Rio Grande, her toe shoespacked among jarred Sprats. The little fish scales spangledthe morning, as she ate them before wading across, her barrea brother’s arm, a laptop in a backpack her headdress for this fairy taleshe’s recorded for me somewhere in my own country, Sacramento, say,hot as a firebird rising up— in hopes of tasting the Golden Applethey said grows here in America.     Jasmine Marshall Armstrong’s poetry is influenced by the grit and glamor of growing up working class in California.…

Small Table in Evening Dusk (after a painting by Henri Eugene Augustin Le Sidaner) How could you not wish this to be your life?Small wooden table, antique blue.Two wicker chairs, a bottle of wine,two peaches plucked from a treethat’s borne them perfectly ripe for centuries, by a canal in France winding towardsthe sea past houses with unlatched shutters,the light on in one, othersnot rushing to quench the coming darkness. How could you not want to liveright in the center of the curve, your viewsoftened into the distance? For this to be your life, you would, of course, needto love the person who leans acrossthe table after supper and takes your…

Under a Still Sky It is a light December day, so quiet, I can hearmyself breathe as the scissors thin in slow motion. Clumps of gray drift across the floorboardsto the grass, like dreams you want to forget. Nothing matters but each strand. The sun feelsgentler here in the shaded deck. In the front porch, it takes aim, as we sway in the hammock. The heatmaking us sleepy, I lean into you, a reflecting light. Two yellow bellied flycatchers flitter over the redbottlebrush blossoms. They are hovering, like us.     Carolina Hospital’s poetry collections include Key West Nights and Other Aftershocks (Anhinga Press, 2019) and The Child of Exile:…

Of Women in the Tent Turn off the light! someone would bellow.         Then the fireflies and tiger mosquitoesrun like messengers between our cots,         humming their constellations of combat.We are spent dry after a day of discipline,         of marching, of perfect formations.In the darkness, we rub our cherry         bruises with coconut oil and menthol slims.We unzip our kitbags, and like Pandora         who loosened the great jar’s lid,out comes flying all manners of hell—         tampons, energy bars, knockoff jasmine perfume,phone-chargers coiled like thin white snakes.         We tuck our M16s under our…

Going Through High School Photos with My Middle School Daughter Here I am with Andy posingat the harvest ho-down. What I see—the brown silk sweaterthat scratched my skinny arms.What my daughter sees—a boyhis arm around my shoulders. Gay, I say.And David with the fake sunset, gay.Alan, so dapper, also gay.Not that I knew. I just knew When I asked them to dance,they would say yes. And then we cometo Darrel and Tom. Gay?my daughter teases.No, not gay I say. I hold back the rush, the wayI can still feel their lips and limbs,taste their sweat. Close your eyes my darling daughter,no one there before your father.Mt. St. Helen’s just a…

No name Here I am, building my altar. Here, the spine of a cow,the tail of a squirrel, the skin of a snake, a girl abandonedin her dorm room to die. Here I am, standing in front of our refrigerator,the freezer door wide open. Here, the dead micein a Petco bag tucked behind Eggo Waffles.   There she is, stretched along the living room floor.Orange,           breathing,            hungry.   There was never an agreementif we should give her a name. Her heat lamp off for days,   no food, no water.I’m told the rescue was quick.   She only ever bites when…

Thunderstorm Rain is a gill slit, a monument shadowof brackish smooth devilfish.The fissure of liquid plummetsstrung together with a pearl button pressed in black denim. Stamped tissue heavesas the carriage of pitch exhalesinto a gray diesel floating across the sky:fig skin and fish scales sewn together as a net   holding the iron horse buoyant in the airfor a moment, and the net tears— split open—the motive form irrigates, splashing across the plains,the mountains, the trees, the sand;   the ocean salt glances toward the moon.The tides pull each diamond back home.     Austin Allen James is a Visiting Professor at Texas Southern University. He has taught at TSU…