Genine Lentine is the author of Mr. Worthington’s Beautiful Experiments on Splashes (New Michigan Press, 2010), and Poses: An Essay Drawn from the Model (Kelly Cove Press, 2010), and co-author with Stanley Kunitz of The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). She received a 2012 Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure grant for Mattress Talks: […]
For [you], I cast [the world] –eye level agave has its own wrapping / is its own wrapping between the wrapping and itself, nothing but itself groove the blades make \ embossing self with self plums jostle clean in a glass bowl of water leafblade or plum–yes, closer, like that pale green crown, glass bowl […]
You: You hold out your hand to receive it but it spills over, your hand already full with it. You: Face to face with it, you tell it you’re looking for it. You: You won’t feel it as it’s happening, but friends study your face for what’s different, ask if you got a haircut. You: […]
I decided I’d try them now—not wait, shortcut decades of suspense, stay right here at my desk, instead of crossing the room to pee. Nothing else changed, really. Out the window, the breeze continued lifting each edge of leaf. At first, warm, kind of lovely, so close against my skin; and for the duration, a […]
What I saw last, I’ll give you first: aluminum canister of holy water On my grandmother’s closet shelf. My father’s written right on it: Lourdes. Years, it’s been there, above the neat row of hangers holding killer Polyester slacksuits. When did he notice it once held insect- icide? Did that, for a moment, deter him? […]
§ Now the model is on hot sand. The crocheted blanket digs into his knees. He’s caught, for this moment, his weary course across the desert. No water in sight. Nothing worth turning back for. He leans into it, face turned in against the sharp wind that breaks across his skull. All the weight is […]
Black plastic raised letters proclaimed it unbreakable and so I began to bend the un- relenting spine. First nothing, then a little give, heat at the seam, blanching at the faultline. Half an hour at his mirror, I worked at it. I worked it away from me and back. I worked at the word until […]
When did you start making pears? What is a pear? (she runs her fingers over one hanging on the branch) Mmm. Yes. It began before I could be seen, when the great body rang, striking, for the first time, the earth. Over the long day, it lay in the sun, and the birds came, and […]