hammah's profile

MARLENE’S gum wrapper chain must have been 50 feet long. Unwinding it was the one time in 7th grade Marlene got enough attention. Kevin remembered her standing there, head of the science room, in a straight navy-blue skirt. Her bony knees punched two uneven balls above a hemline dropped straight from thin hips. Her pole-stick legs sank in white ankle socks. He could still see Marlene’s thin tits pushed against the baggy stripes of a shirt. It was nearly summer, the end of school. He watched ...

I MADE ALL THIS UP, so don’t call me a liar. I’m telling the truth; I made it up. The words fell through Tonya’s mind and over her shoulder like hair, slouched as she was against a dirty grey chair. The fluorescent light above the sink flicked a dim warning over a pile of crusty dishes. A cooking pot sat empty near a half-opened can of chicken soup. I made all this up, Tonya thought and reached for a green lighter, still warm. She flicked it and sucked fire into a cigarette held off two fing...

Teenagers push against the hot night in urgent tones for hours, They are swept in searching, restless. Find me, find me they beg of their bodies, caught at the crest of imitation, disbursing all dreams on the fast advance of morning, Until there is nothing left to say. Someone took white paint and wrote "I Love God" On a rock beside the river. The bone-colored reflection stayed fixed on A stone a thousand-million years old Tossed up over the edge of an age. Your raspberry shirt collapsed on ...

No matter, the toss of paint, and first random stroke pulled from patterns out of horsehairs. The canvas doesn't lie. It just waits in feminine lines of reception. (Wanting broad strokes now and soft brushes later; then, nothing.) Counting time with a pendulum of color, the hand layers one to another. She laughs out loud from every corner in tones of white and cream patience. It is similar: the sentence of parts doing time in periods, icons yank meaning from nothing. Internal beats scream at...

If I whispered A sweet sound in Your one ear like Oh-h-h And then again In the other like My-y-y Would it unwrap The mystery that You are Like two twists Of a sweet? Would you sparkle Like mint or Would you sting Like anise Or would you melt Warm against my tasting Like buttercream?