It is the year 3001, and humanity has almost reached the point of no return: only a select few humans—known as “The Feelers”—are able to experience emotions, and a governmental program has decreed that they be medicated to ensure they to adopt the detached, unfeeling dispositions of the younger generations… After the Feeler’s ashes were […]
bereavement
A chant, to wail, hospital ward
It is the year 3001, and humanity has almost reached the point of no return: only a select few humans—known as “The Feelers”—are able to experience emotions, and a governmental program has decreed that they be medicated to ensure they to adopt the detached, unfeeling dispositions of the younger generations… Syringe in hand, Doctor Albright […]
Naresh Mathur
When your eyesFrom the deepest blueTurned into waterFlowing from within Magical touchCold breath of deathSad and stillTranscendental Your heart was tightAnd so aliveHot air boostingBlood and fire Elements revealedBlessing your bodyA new startAs there is no time Out of life
When Silence Fails
It is almost exactly ten yearssince we shared drunken kissesin an unheated barin Chattanooga, Tennessee.Later that night, drunker still,a kiss broke into laughterwhen we rolled off my bedand fell to the floor. Ten years later: youstill in Tennessee, in Nashville, mein Phoenix, Arizona. A catch-upconversation: You told me aboutyour kidney transplants, addictionto pain medication, recovery,getting […]
Dad
He ate plain oatmeal every morning in the same leather chair that mom got him for Father’s Day in 88. One breakfast after finishing an orange grapefruit, I told him that I loved him just loud enough so he would not hear
Butterflies and Other People
For two years, I lived on the edge of woods, on the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tennessee, between a sewage plant, an American Indian burial ground, and the state mental hospital. Outside my house I saw a butterfly, the most radiant being I had ever seen — blue and black and ivory, incandescent. A friend later […]
Grieving
The Santoku knifeI gave to my brotherbut wish I hadn’t And some nights when Duke and Hankare on the turntable I still drop what I am doing
Spreading Ashes in the Ausable
more coveted than winefrom milk, the masteralchemists of China coulddo no better than these cloudschurning into rivers, the way cottongrass renews itself or how a son returns in time to let go.
My Turn
When it was my turn to go in,I sat cross-legged by the ventilator and told my buddy goodbye.I could have cried but he deserved more. He deserved what carries no weight.Time. Before the lungs fill with river water and the dream oozes away from the ribs of lotus petals caught between the rocks.
My Turn
When it was my turnto go in I sat cross-leggedby the ventilator and told my buddygoodbye. I could have cried but he deserved more than that. He deservedwhat carries no weight. Time. Before the lungs fill with river water, and the dream oozes away from fingers like the texture of drowning lotus petals no longercaught between the rocks.