Sunset (1930), Paul Klee Family Portrait: Featuring a Talala, Oklahoma Sunset Bleeding across a late-July sky like a delicious headwound. Mom is still alive, riding the turn of the century’s collarbone. Dad skips dinner, to work, but we know the glow from his office’s window is a World of Warcraft raid. My brother is in the Tulsa County lockup for the night, after stealing DVDs in the garden section of Walmart. There’s a giant pool that wobbles like a mouth spilling secre

Excavation (1950), Willem de Kooning That Winter I Grew Fat on love: he fried me eggs in butter—never enough butter he’d say as he baked me one more loaf of sourdough, planted raspberries on my tongue with his mouth, held out ladles brimming with apple tea brewed in cinnamon, honey to sink my lips into. More than love I’d say it was a diet of being loved. The machine of his body craned me from the sofa to the dinette. His Honda migrated me across rivers, out of the lonely wal

Champagne Bottles (1933), Ilse Bing New Years There was the New Year’s Eve that began with a call from the hospital. A few hours before...

Figure with Stars (1933), Joan Miró Tricks and my children became ghouls  flitting between the veil of night, that year, they were in...

Exotic Garden (1954), Kurt Seligmann Holy is Another Kind of Lonely Make of pain what you will, the kid in me will say it’s all for show....

The Moon at Night (1890), George Inness Full Moon Effect Come on, Joaquin, I said to the horses, not knowing what else to say, the ...

Ice (4) (1989), Gerhard Richter Actually, Transition is Not Death Look. It does not snow in June In North Carolina. But there was ice and...

Greyed Rainbow (1953), Jackson Pollock Windbroke You run  with a rock in your mouth because of a trouble with breathing that used to...

Growing City (1956), Eleanor Coen Eulogies of Motion To listen for home— ( in appearance at least ) the movement of ...

✧ Writer’s Regimen Contest Winner ✧ Meetinghouse Hill, Roxbury, Massachusetts (1799), John Ritto Penniman un “Until the dying one says...

Correctional Good Lord, so you finally found me in jail,     strutting up as some bigass motherfucker during grub time     then grunting,...

Undertow The unlabeled bottle contained these little yellow pills with letters and numbers—SR6— engraved in them and I wondered when I’d...

On Word Choice The house across the street was something. Say alive, not something. Something is vapid and closer to silence than...

Nova Dad under the Chevy Nova with a cigarette in the driveway Gentle so the ashes don’t fall by the front yard by the crabapple tree...

What I Was Owed I, for one, wanted his arm gone. Dimas wanted to test run some tacky mustard yellow paper cutter left unsupervised...

​I Wish You Were Dead I hear it through an open window. He screams I wish you were dead. I listen to the mean music from the street, sour...

Turandot Fragments i. La legge è questa He asks if I’ve noticed a pattern, & I check the memories buried by the accumulation of my...

A Walk in the Park To be born again, you need an incarnation specialist—a team from the Bureau of Needles to thread you through— Your...

de Les gestes de la neige Au centre du monde se situait la fourche amoureuse du cou, ta clavicule métaphysique En nidification je suis...

Photo of the author, Mónice Gomery--short haired with big gold hoop earrings--standing before a the sea, which is blurry behind Gomery