talk about alchemy

with my change i used to buy her rings from fishbowls full of toys outside the

supermarket. they were like little plastic pieces of some ancient alchemist’s dream. i would present her with my presents in their clear capsules and she would smile like a well spent quarter. her slender fingers wore the child’s toys like real jewels. but one day i looked into the many faceted mirrors and gleams of beginnings and spent a little more than nickels and dimes left over from my last bottle of coke. i took this tiny fragment of my labor and slipped it on her finger in the dark. at first she thought it was another twenty-five cent joke but only for a moment, a blink. it took us just three years to turn plastic into gold. what wonderful medieval scientists we would have made.

the day my grandpa didn’t die

inside he was gathering
on the floor
into a pile of inanimate flesh,
a body i could not handle
alone, it was too big.
outside i chipped ice away,
to clear the steps for the paramedics,
and it gathered in tiny crystal shards
around my feet
until i brushed them aside,
they were not the issue.
i thought that he should die
in bed,
a selfish wish for the slow dissipation
of life allowed by cotton sheets
like an iv drip,
drip, drip...
i used to feel
in some youthful understanding
of morality/mortality,
that my goodness (promised)
could be exchanged for a life,
so i screamed into the night
and my screams solidified
into tiny ice crystals
and floated (i am told)
toward god.

empty handed

he wonders,
like a madman
trying to prove the existence
of god
in the veins
of a leaf
of a tree
of his childhood,
if hands are really meant
for holding.

email us with your comments.