Author Archives: Qu Literary Magazine

Snorts in the passageway, pinches the delicate ones—

those who wear the jackdaw’s gray plumage.

Kafka’s father and Kafka’s father’s two dead sons.

This trilogy in which a Czech accent flourishes, upon which

the holy days continue to riffle the year.

Can such a man corrupt the liver of a virgin goose?

A bread job, then. A useless son for Kafka’s father,

this loser looking into the lost fingers of workers.

A bit of blood spreads through the lungs.

Feathers ink the page. It’s 2 pm or 2 am?

At what hour does the incessant womanizing begin?

How to avoid marriage, how continue flirtations with

drowning.

Kafka’s father’s son, dirty with the sex of octaves.

Filthy to himself, and as for marriage,

that rumor died in Munich. That consummation—

a conjugation of who, with whom, when, and why.

The father above, the son below, High German spoken

to veil a lowly Yiddish dialect.

Its only remaining artifact—a few satin skirts

left to themselves like theater curtains,

in whose wake the story exists.

Give us a moment to learn to pray for Kafka’s father.

Pater in his silk dressing gown with the dusty lilies,

the one who rises early to begin his work again.

Grabbing a raincoat, I find a moth and ask:

What do you do here in my closet,

what of your light–

to which he says: At the end of each night,

my light goes into my soul, what of

yours? The day is then

the weather’s blue colors, mirrors and rain,

that almost white where a thick darkness

blurs with a thick light.

Standing there, I see myself almost a man,

almost a moth, pieces of

a remembered face

brought up, overlapping, as if the changing face

were on old film, and that old film

played across moth wings

holding their position. Almost myself

frame by frame and without sound,

imposed on dust

for an audience. Almost my face holding

still, and face turning away. Face

of wing-wilt and wend.

Grabbing a raincoat, I found a moth and asked

myself about light, and myself answered

light; a moth

throbbed at having been found. When

my words had flickered aloud, the moth,

too, flickered,

an unknown face caught cringing, unfolding

face laughing, face

forgetting its name.

Nights like these, when I am less a man

more a traffic light lingering on yellow,

more feet full of running, twitching over the gas

pedal,

more snake caught between rocks thrashing,

more a radio’s needle stuck between static and

station,

coughs and crashes of what could be

song or argument,

more the image of the moon as garlic clove,

as burst and leaking light –

when tourist season makes me feel I can stop

pretending –

I know I don’t belong here, I belong everywhere.

The engagement was over, so Amanda dug a well

in the middle of a field, tossed a pack of Camels

and a few cracked novels down the hole,

then dyed her hair redder in that water, so cold

it dried stiff. She wanted to see Maine’s lighthouses,

but the drive was too damn far, so she started digging.

I can see light when I look up from here, anyway.

She wears a kimono like a tired housewife,

blows smoke away from my face, clinks her cider

against my beer, a Cheers to every woman

who believed a man when he said love and true,

who let herself bloom when there was no rain.

Down there, the light becomes a white coin hanging

above her slack mouth, her tilted chin, her dull eyes.

i’m afraid of stars

fuck it

all of outer space.

how small it makes me.

i’d rather not count

the grains of sand

stuck to my thighs

after sex

on the beach

a millepede

scuttering next

to my shoulder

meteors shooting

blank over

my lover’s head.

not so blank.

i abort a galaxy

half named after me.

named ammo.

named nothing.

i don’t know how

to navigate a maze

without knocking down

walls. i don’t know

one place

one thought

one urge

from the next.

but i know

what it means

to roll over

in the middle

of the night

to shallow breath

of a quiet sleeper

who—when he wakes—

will disappear

inside me.