devLIT

I love quiet people, because eventually they do something crazy wild, and its everyone else’s turn to watch, astounded, unable to form words. It is the violent surprise of fat snow, falling softly, softly without a sound, picking up more and more weight as it tumbles along. Spinning quickly, until the storm has reshaped into a turbulent white art. This was her. Her smile, a light play of secrets ready to tumble out. Her kiss, a harder tone that kept me awake at night. Her caress, less a show of affection, and more a sign of dominance. We sat in silence, but it wasn't the silence that suffocated me.

I And all these are fictions too, In rolls of film, tuberculosis gray. We recount and recall as if we were madmen, Locked away in dresser drawers and folio bins, Our black ink (-stained fingers) running down                                 these pale passages- Waistcoats deep in the black soil, Stroking our egos and straining our necks To fashion our tongues as red neckties, All to the rhythm of the doldrums. II In this city of poets and artisans, I was but a fishmonger: Selling cheek and tail from the daily catch, Pulling my pushcart by and down the alleyways; Caught against the current of the hungry crowd. And there among the refuse I

                    Forgive me for helping you understand                    you’re not made of words alone.                         —Roque Dalton; Clandestine Poems I first learned how to build a house of playing cards in an adolescent psychiatric unit in suburban Chicago. A roommate taught me a trick, a mindset really, to have while placing the cards themselves— that a house of cards is always stacked against itself to stand. My trial-and-error attempts led to a lengthy row of playing cards and the realization that there’s always friction between two cards, but never the same center of gravity— like a relat

I. The first memory I have of my older brother is of him fishing me out of a pool. I don’t remember if I jumped in or if I was pushed—all I remember is I couldn’t swim and I was thrashing around thinking I was going to die, when out of nowhere, I felt someone grab my arm and pull me, coughing and choking, to the surface. “It’s okay, buddy,” he said. “I gotcha.” The memory’s remote. Nothing comes before and nothing comes after until years later. I used to suspect it was just a dream, until my brother brought it up. He was on a date and I was sitting in the backseat of his car because our