“The Quiet WorldIn an effort to get people to lookinto each other’s eyes more,and also to appease the mutes,the government has decidedto allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup.I am adjusting well to the new way.Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you.When she doesn’t respond,I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love youthirty-two and a third times.After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe.”

“Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massiveinsect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the endof a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurtin your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kindsof women—those you write poems aboutand those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought youa bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addictionlyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I workedwithin the confines of my character, castas the bad boy in your life, the Magellanof your dark side. We don’t have a past so muchas a bunch of electricity and liquor, powernever put to good use. What we had togethermakes it sound like a virus, as if we caughtone another like colds, and desire was merelya symptom that could be treated with soupand lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immuneto your waterfall scent, still haven’t developedantibodies for your smile. I don’t know how longregret existed before humans stuck a word on it.I don’t know how many paper towels it would taketo wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the lightof a candle being blown out travels fasterthan the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffinginto each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trickbirthday candle—didn’t make the silenceany easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were writtenin disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of youso hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d pressyour face against the porthole of my submarine.I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skiddingoff the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyridingover flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolateto be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphyof each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraphfrom the volumes of what couldn’t be said.”

“Once I dated a woman I only liked 43%.So I only listened to 43% of what she said.Only told the truth 43% of the time.And only kissed with 43% of my lips.Some say you can't quantify desire, attaching a number to passion isn't right, that the human heart doesn't work like that.But for me it does-I walk down the streetand numbers appear on the foreheadsof the people I look at. In bars, it's worse.With each drink, the numbers go upuntil every woman in the joint has a blurryeighty something above her eyebrows, and the next day I can only remember 17%of what actually happened. That's the problemwith booze-it screws with your math.”

“I used to think love was two people suckingon the same straw to see whose thirst was stronger,but then I whiffed the crushed walnuts of your nape,traced jackals in the snow-covered tombstones of your teeth.I used to think love was a non-stop saxophone soloin the lungs, till I hung with you like a pair of sneakersfrom a phone line, and you promised to always smellthe rose in my kerosene. I used to think love was terminalpelvic ballet, till you let me jog beside while you pedaledall over hell on the menstrual bicycle, your tongueripping through my prairie like a tornado of paper cuts.I used to think love was an old man smashing a mirrorover his knee, till you helped me carry the barbellof my spirit back up the stairs after my car pirouettedin the desert. You are my history book. I used to not believein fairy tales till I played the dunce in sheep’s clothingand felt how perfectly your foot fit in the glass slipperof my ass. But then duty wrapped its phone cordaround my ankle and yanked me across the continent.And now there are three thousand miles between the uand s in esophagus. And being without you is like standingat a cement-filled wall with a roll of Yugoslavian nickelsand making a wish. Some days I miss you so muchI’d jump off the roof of your office buildingjust to catch a glimpse of you on the way down. I wishwe could trade left eyeballs, so we could always seewhat the other sees. But you’re here, I’m there,and we have only words, a nightly phone call - one chanceto mix feelings into syllables and pour into the receiver,hope they don’t disassemble in that calculus of wire.And lately - with this whole war thing - the language machinesupporting it - I feel betrayed by the alphabet, like they’reinjecting strychnine into my vowels, infecting my consonants,naming attack helicopters after shattered Indian tribes:Apache, Blackhawk; and West Bank colonizers are settlers,so Sharon is Davey Crockett, and Arafat: Geronimo,and it’s the Wild West all over again. And I imagine Picassolooking in a mirror, decorating his face in war paint,washing his brushes in venom. And I think of Jeninin all that rubble, and I feel like a Cyclops with two eyes,like an anorexic with three mouths, like a scuba diverin quicksand, like a shark with plastic vampire teeth,like I’m the executioner’s fingernail trying to reasonwith the hand. And I don’t know how to speak lovewhen the heart is a busted cup filling with spit and paste,and the only sexual fantasy I have is bustinginto the Pentagon with a bazooka-sized pen and blowingopen the minds of generals. And I comfort myselfwith the thought that we’ll name our first child Jenin,and her middle name will be Terezin, and we’ll teach herhow to glow in the dark, and how to swallow firecrackers,and to never neglect the first straw; because no oneever talks about the first straw, it’s always the last strawthat gets all the attention, but by then it’s way too late.”

“When you were sleeping on the sofaI put my ear to your ear and listenedto the echo of your dreams.That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships.I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like youand ask them the questions I would ask you.Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smokerising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms.”

“I know loving me isn’t easy – the all-nighthelicopter parties, the glow-in-the-dark haircuts, but when I look at youit’s like praying with my eyes. I know it’s stupid to not own a gun yet haveso many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humansto their ears and listen to the echo of machines.”

“The Everlasting Staircase"Jeffrey McDanielWhen the call came, saying twenty-four hours to live,my first thought was: can't she postpone her exitfrom this planet for a week? I've got places to do,people to be. Then grief hit between the ribs,said disappear or reappear more fully. so I boardeda red eyeball and shot across America,hoping the nurses had enough quarters to keepthe jukebox of Grandma's heart playing. She grew uppoor in Appalachia. And while world war IIfunctioned like Prozac for the Great Depression,she believed poverty was a double feature,that the comfort of her adult years was merelyan intermission, that hunger would hobble back,hurl its prosthetic leg through her window,so she clipped, clipped, clipped -- became the JacquesCousteau of the bargain bin, her wetsuitstuffed with coupons. And now --pupils fixed, chindangling like the boots of a hanged man --I press my ear to her lampshade-thin chestand listen to that little soldier march toward whateverplateau, or simply exhaust his arsenal of beats.I hate when people ask if she even knew I was there.The point is I knew, holding the one-sidedconversation of her hand. Once I believed the heartwas like a bar of soap -- the more you use it,the smaller it gets; care too much and it'll snap offin your grasp. But when Grandma's last breathwaltzed from that room, my heart openedwide like a parachute, and I realized she didn't die.She simply found a silence she could call her own.”