May 19, 2011
A new story-poem of mine is out in the illustrious Gulf Coast journal’s 25th anniversary issue (in print and online). It’s called MY NEBULAE, MY ANTILLES, and it trades in matters of intergalactic prophecy, ouroborus eroticism, leprotic nuns, and Communist postal service. It appears alongside pieces by Bret Anthony Johnston, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, D.A. Powell, and other lovelies…a delightful issue all around.
My piece is formatted a little wonky in the e-version, but looks as it ought and should in the print issue.
You can read it online HERE.
Or, you can exercise your fingers and read it on actual paper by ordering a copy HERE.
Let’s say she lies all day upon the beach in the Antilles, and I embroider her until she becomes my buttonhole: a silken stitch with needle and thread of seaweed. And then I slip through her skin of sand and cashmere, as though a pearl fastened tight against the rise of her flesh.
I don’t know why this is in purple, but I’ll oblige. This piece I wrote in conversation between travel in Martinique and Latvia. I have since learned that a rare species of eel is born on the shores of Martinique and migrates to Latvia – a journey that takes over a decade, and involves an alchemical series of metamorphoses. Since then, three more stories have emerged between the Baltic and the Caribbean. Two bodies of water whose temperatures and temperaments seem nearly antithetical.
Back to the eels, and black ink…
It was as though my travels to the equator had altered the passage of time. As though some spine had risen up inside me along which time nestled, like a dune. I barely recognized this woman. Despite all claims of dry, hers is a damp heart, and pounding.