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SHE SHARK [HOW TO CIRCLE A TANK]

Some sharks must swim, constantly, in order to breathe. That’s why, when confined, she circles the tank like a madwoman. [I go to see the shark at the aquarium, I find I am unprepared for her sadness] [How to circle a tank? Asks the she-shark, asks the soldier] A shark …

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Isolation

in my parents’ basement pretending the desk is a bar top pouring-can-into-glass acting as the girls who work the taps who are kind and smile for tips and are fragile as falling glass, smash. here i chew my finger skin and drink until i sleep because my teenage mattress in …

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The Year of the Weight

When Navid Abhari was twelve, going to the movies meant parting ways in the theater lobby. He felt very strongly that the only way to watch a movie was among strangers. They would stand in line together to buy popcorn. Then, upon exiting the snack bar, he would say, “Well, …

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photo of my grandmother climbing a fence

she wears the sky because the sky knows the distance. it is a blue cascade, blue as grief, as drowning. her hands are emaciated brown, holding her up. over the fence. over and over again, dementia takes over my grandmother. over my grandmother, dementia takes and takes and takes and …

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Are They Lisianthus?

My eighty-year-old mother says no, no, I think they just are. She doesn’t remember names, what was. Roots sunk deep, she just is. I dream of gardens: boxwood labyrinths where I might lose myself. Some place where the planted surpasses the planned. Untended blossoms become brambles. Brambly thicket, her mind. …

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While He Works, the Electrician Chats

about disaster. Connections at switches twisted just a bit loose. Squirrels in the attic, sharp teeth and splintered copper. Breakers corroding themselves into spark. Outlets that smell like burning because they are. Now he’s sawing a hole in our sheetrock. Says the air behind walls can whip with current. Arcing …

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Artifacts

I could tell you that I’m brave, but brave is a lie. I could tell you that I’m doing well, but that denies the very nature of loss.   This is an archaeological dig, everything contained & conjured. It’s raining/blackbirds. I drag a duffel, grey, onto the porch & start …

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Scale

“The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space “My map and measurements yielded a thesis which I wrote out in ink and tried to prove mathematically: the notion that affiliation is borne by proximity, and that proximity is requisite …

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7-Up as a Cure for Irony

I pour a glass of 7-Up before a date with Jamie. Every time. I don’t eat dinner. I can’t. I tell my parents I’m not hungry. I carry the 7-Up into my bedroom, closing the door. 7-Up is honeysuckle summers, the slant of sun at dusk on hydrangeas, the sweetness …

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