Atalanta

Last night a faceless goddess

Visited me in a dream

Another appeared beside her

Beautiful and awful

The blank face

Issued a warning

“Never stop for a golden apple.”

The other one laughed

I started running

But I felt strings on my back

Keeping me in place

The luminous one

Moved me like a marionette

When the apples appeared

My body picked them up

Until my arms were full

Of rotting fruit

Playing Guns

We played guns in the backyard, taking cover in the suburban rubble of rusted water heaters, broken bicycles, and empty cattle trailers. Our orange-tipped barrels targeting each other with naive finge

Picnic Parenting

I. I wear a potato salad smile, yellow Kind of squishy but soft like a “my mom makes it better” – don’t you know? Still disappointing, but a quiet type Like you were expecting not to taste What you wa

Potassium-Based Chemical Retransformation

Yesterday you were slow Down crosswalk sign Yellow and curved like an Apostrophe, comma, slow Down there are children here Avoiding you. Today you are still curved But speckled Brown leopard print hic