There’s this bowling ball. Its proper name is the Maxo Polyester Swirl Bowling Ball, 14lbs. That’s what you would search for online, if you wanted one. Only, you won’t find it online. And you won’t find it in a bowling supplies shop—not that they really exist anymore—or a sports and leisure store, or anywhere. Maxo […]

1. Approaching Prayer In a sudden breeze the poet watched three dandelion spores break their tethers. They drifted out for a moment like trivial monoliths. He was sick and had to die somewhere, so he had chosen a place that might be sick with poetry. But he held back the moment of arrival, watching these […]

It was my mother who gave me the zoetrope. She presented it to me for my birthday and I loved it at once, not for its own sake or even for the magic it wrought, but because it was something we could share. It was made of carved wood, with a floral design encircling the […]

I am fifteen the first time my mother pays for me to see the octopus. Inside those yellowing tents with their black-stitched tears we are not supposed to see, my mother pushes coins toward the mustachioed attendant who looks at her breasts and then at mine. Smiling, he tears off two tickets and points in […]