Henrietta Goodman grew up in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana. Her first book of poetry, titled Take What You Want, was published in 2007 by Alice James Books as winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award. She has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Montana Arts […]
It’s true we were abandoned, though I was older. My parents were ignorance, propriety. His were faith. I treated him like a child at first, praised his art, refused to let him pay. I laughed at his uncombed hair, the bits of leaves stuck to his clothes. Later, I gave him my key. We […]
It’s not a bird, and that’s part of the problem. It calls into question what pleases the eye, makes you doubt what you see. If paradise means things are what they seem, there’s no need for a second glance, or a second guess. You can take what you want and what you […]
Psychology takes the fun out of everything, and infinity can only be fathomed as infinite boredom or infinite loss. Physics, which we used to trust, fails us altogether when the number 8 turned on its side turns out to be merely sleeping— rises up like a cow in a field, a cow with surprising vigor. […]
The possibilities are not endless. It’s summer: around our heads, a swarm of intentions… no-see-ums, let’s say. Beyond potential lies choice— a white room, Georgia O’Keeffe prints on the ceiling, a quarter-cup of blood in a tube. Is it true what they say about Georgia O’Keeffe? If so, the vagina is widespread, meaning, […]
Brother, why must we enter? The mountain opens—in the night, a blacker hole. My shoes twist on gravel. This is the mouth of the monster in every dream: black teeth, the smell of rotten leaves. No light at the end. Without touching the walls, how will we know where the path bends? Is this […]
Does the devil use his tail as a weapon? My son wants to know. He sees the abstract made manifest—angular petal, red kite, black heart on a cable. The heart itself is an arrowhead, flint. Its point is tangential, provocative, the brain’s vexation. No sparks today. Rain falls so hard the drops ricochet in […]
When he rows out to collect the geese, they see him floating like an unexpected god, oval hull weathered gray, oars treading the dark water. They see him coming, a boy barely more than retriever of wing-shot bodies, see how he snatches them from the scum of ice and wrings them like he’s turning the […]