you know how when you are reintroduced to a thing
a thing from your child-days, a grand something, a monolith of that tiny time
and you know how when you see it, it is suddenly
average-sized and painfully plain.
well, this wretched phenomena,
this inevitable happening of that comes with the aching curse of age,
was given a name by the scientific community:

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (or AiWS for short)

i swear to god that’s the name,
and when i learned that some psychologist chose to identify this as a real something
(and give it a title so playfully curious, at that)
i couldn’t help but giggle at how man’s heart can be so unnecessarily sub lime.

Hiro was such a clever guy.
he always said the funniest little jokes, even when he was Hiro-chan, to me.
he used to act like a cat when he was frustrated and, and-
remember what he said to the mailman that day, in like june?
about how he looked like an angry Hotei-osho?
we all laughed and that mailman, that man’s face went radish red.

he was such a good lawyer, Hiro.
i mean, he wasn’t rich and powerful, no
but he did good things, though.
like Sayotoma’s lease –
without Hiro, he would’ve lost the store!
and then where would we get our tempura? huh?


oh, Hiro, you are so much fun to talk about.
and i hate that all i have of you now is smoldering incense and an expired passport.
i poured a cup of water on your grave today, you know.
it was a hurting kind of hot under summer’s sun – it’s august, after all.
some steam came off, and it sounded like you sighing
and i said more loudly than i cared no problem, Hiro
and my wife looked at me, with a misting eye,
while my son kept flicking matches
from that cheap matchbook we got at Sayotama’s place.

all the failed matches collected between his sneakers
and i thought that i wish Sayotama didn’t make all his matches
so **** fragile.
they burst and blacken in a second,
and you don’t have the chance to really light something,
and they just end up falling between the sneakers
of some kid who can’t even remember you, Hiro.

Father, Son, Mechanic…
Man, I’ve wanted to talk to you – really talk to you – for some time now.
to see your face in front of me, instead of dangling from necklaces,
or hanging, melancholy, over sexless couples’ beds.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading all that stuff you wrote (supposedly),
and I’ve enjoyed it, Man, I have.
but I keep wanting it to be a letter, when in the end it’s just
a bipartisan explanation – an engineer’s guide to
building a pretty vehicle around a faulty engine.

I always see you, arms spread,
sprawled across the older bitter-america’s steering wheel.
my mama would tease me, saying you’d want me to help some day.
but you and your cronies drove me like a beat-down El Camino,
joyfully taking me through wrong turns and bumpy streets
waiting for my chassis to split.
and once I ran out of gas to offer, you refused to touch me at all,
letting me rot in your cobweb garage.

and all those ******* in turtlenecks and polos popped,
they’ve gleefully branded your logo on their chemical biceps
and gaily explain how close you were.
how they knew you like no one else did,
how you guys didn’t have a connection, but a relationship.
people should only let their mechanics touch their cars, though,
and keep their innards free of oily fingers.

to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this establishment again.
it’s a little too clean for my taste, and your prices are way to high
especially when all you get is a little peace of mind and a sense of humbled grandeur.
don’t worry about the car, though – you can keep it.
you’ve sort of spoiled all its good intentions,
so I’ll be buying a new one sometime soon.
I guess I’ll be taking a taxi.
No, actually.
I’ll hitchhike home.

men would always tell me about the
arcs of screaming air splitting through gaia’s hair,
the heads of wheat falling, light shredding, and the sun bowing before
Leah and her scythe

this woman spent all her twenty one years in the fires of idaho
working for her father
preparing food for her brothers before their schooling.
she was made to stay at home,
and there she worked and washed and read and cut and crystallized

business men in windup cars would see her off the highway
her muscles swaying with the wind, treetop hair flogging the setting sun
singing folk songs to herself in a falsetto that sounded like a rocking chair.

these men would stop to chat, but soon realize that this
Leah was burning too much for them.
her heart was different from city folk
and most country folk for that matter.
her ventricles were connected through a series of
crimson twigs and gnarled vines.
it pumped like any other heart,
but it would crack and wheeze anytime she left that farm.

those businessmen expected that she would be enthralledby anything out of town.
but it was the opposite; fancy gadgets bore her and
snazzy suits and autos seemed like pointless little ornaments.
she’d be more impressed by a man who could cut wheat like she could
a man who could shoot life out of the iron earth
and feed his kin with the pickings of his heart.

but she never quite found a man like that.
she stayed there, and let herself bleed into those idaho hills.
the roots of the grain wrapped around her veins
and her lungs breathed for the farm
just as its rainfall pumped her brown blood.

she never grew old that Leah, because she kept her crop so fresh.
every morning she watered and plowed and every while,
with scorching eyes and whipping locks
she’d swing her scythe, and smell the breaking spines of wheat,
and would quietly sing,
like a rocking chair.
Posted by David Clifford Turner at

I spent two years calmly collecting the pieces of you,
the boy I love like the music.
I remember the way your auburn eyes stared at me when your body turned to glass,
and you were split and scattered across the horizon.
I walked through forests, under redwood gods, looking for the subtle gleaming of your shards in the soil.
It went on like this; I’d find another piece, smile at its lovely shine, and place it in my basket, continuing.

I wasn’t alone, though.
Sometimes I’d see a piece sitting on a leaf miles up
and The Wind would be watching.
It would gently blow you off, floating you to my breast, my hands grasping tightly.

I lifted a stone to find a piece in the arms of a Spider.
A single tear fell from one of its eyes as it handed you to me, understanding.
As I walked off, it slowly waved as it wept.

When I went north to find you, and saw a piece locked under the frozen lake,
the Sun outstretched a warming ray to melt a hole,
one just big enough for my hand to lift you out of the arctic.

For months I searched, but it was not a sad hunt.
Because every piece I found brought a memory of your laugh,
your long fingers,
or the coolness of your neck.
And every time I was scared at the impossibility of it all,
the melancholy kindness of the hearts surrounding me would remind me that
all I had to do was keep looking, and eventually I’d find all of you.

My basket was almost filled, and with every piece I found,
my face would glow in your bliss.
I sprinted across the gray desert, kicking your shards out of the sand.
And in the exhilaration, I barely noticed the great ocean I had come to.
I had reached the end of it all, found every piece of you I could,
but you were still just fragments in a basket.

I collapsed in front of the Sea, shrieking your name until
the screams scratched my throat.
The Sun and the Wind and the Spider and every wonderful Thing that helped me
crowded around, mourning.

Our tears flooded the shore, raising the tide.
The Sea filled up, and lifted the basket, carrying it out to the end of things.
It drifted out further,
until the sum of all your pieces and those two years seemed like a little gleaming speck itself.

And then, at the defining line of the world, the Moon shot up.
Slowly at first, but gaining momentum, it exploded into the indigo sky,
becoming larger and larger until tenderly taking its place in front of me.
It placed your basket in my hands, and laid your final golden piece on its top.
Light enveloped its wicker frame, and it burst in an eruption of sunset sparks
and everyone stood with shining eyes as the colors took shape:
two arms, two legs, shaggy hair, auburn eyes, long fingers.
And then you stood, collapsing into my arms.
We silently held one another for some time,
and in unison everyone sighed with a quiver in their voice
at the aching beauty of all things.

I remember when I found her in porcelain
cracked. she shivered the shell until she pierced
out a tiny foot – a baby’s foot.
five fingers and toes were revealed at a time,
but then came bursting out her head: all-black
eyes, large and quaking. skin as pale as the
egg she split from. but instead of wafty locks,
she had soft brown feathers, flowing from her
widow’s peak to the small of her back.
besides that she was a perfectly normal
child.

i grew her up in town, with the other kids.
i fed her what i knew: seeds and corn and the
occasional peanut butter pinecone.
I made her a nest of blankets every night,
and she sang me songs goodnight and
we always slept soundly and unthinkingly.

she grew up quick though, and soon came the days
when you send your daughter off alone
to school. she was five and I was thirty eight,
and I was the one terrified. most other girls
don’t have feathers, especially this young.
I offered to shave her spine, but she refused.
she crooned that she was born in an egg,
and she didn’t care who knew it.
I was frightened for my beautiful bird-child.

schoolday came, and off she went, dancing her way
to the moaning old bus. it puttered off
in a smoggy wheeze. the sun sulked some miles
before she slowly staggered home, without a
backpack, shirt torn, blood rubbed on her knees.
I asked her what happened, and she never told,
saying it would only make me dark and bitter.
but every morning she still hopped her way
onto that bus, with her bright smile and ******* eyes.

I couldn’t take it. one day I followed
the bus on my bicycle, and visited
her school for the first time. it was large and grey,
like a cynical stone with bunch of windows.
I roared in, asking where she was, attendants
voicelessly pointing in any direction
but the right one. I saw her on the playground,
lanky kids pushing her, bony fingers grabbing,
trying to rip off her telling birthmarks.
she screamed, shouting that she was a child, too.
they asked if children came from eggs, if children
ate only seeds, if children had those things down their back.
she said that this one did. they all laughed.

an angry boy pinched a long chestnut feather
and pulled; she wailed a song of aching.
I jumped in to rip him off but he wouldn’t let go.
the feather stretched longer and longer,
four feet, five! her body bucked and we fell over.
her feathers spread from her spine, wingspan huge
and she glowed a stunning yellow-pink.
her black eyes shimmered, looking at me, apologizing.
I ran to hold her, tears on my cheeks, and she
held out her hand, no. I asked why and she said
goodbyes are too hard this way.
before I could ask what she meant, she sang
I love you
and exploded upwards. her wings stroked lightrays as she
burst higher. she went straight to heavens, and just
when I thought she was out of sight, she spread her feathers
and her silhouette erupted on the sun.
I waved, and saw her white smile glow from her grand shadow.
and off she danced, feet playfully poking at clouds,
with regular birds gliding beside her
and regular children watching below,
her boundless black eyes unjudgingly
gazing at the world running beneath her.

she was my bird-child, and I was her father
for a brief period. I wonder where she is nowadays.
whether she found others like herself,
others who didn’t care. or whether she’s still in the skies,
dancing with the stars, her ten fingers and ten toes
wiggling in the blue, feathers proudly spread, singing.

cannonball bodies
in stagnant ponds
tossed-out towels
under browning legs
fluttered words
and humid spit-kisses
mean that for now
our stray-mutt mouths are fed

discarded burnt butts
and whisper-splash bottles
angry coffee caked on tires
from nights of broken speedometers
and a.m. dinners
frustrated waitresses
and chuckling short-order chefs
shadow the backs of polaroids

august breaks in,
with cars on lawns and
weeks with relatives.
the sun sets early
and the moon predictably dims.
our blood hardens,
and we all stop simply flowing.

june is born
and our arteries melt again
watch hands are ripped off
pagers recycled
clouds make critters
and our coughs make clouds

lazy insects and
sweat sit on eyebrows above wayfarers,
reflecting summer’s praying,
under black glass, youth decaying