Eight Jokes for the Unborn

I've got a new essay up at The Nervous Breakdown. Here's an excerpt from Eight Jokes for the Unborn:

Twenty-seven years older than we were for Ethiopia and we still watch, hands against our bellies, unable to understand what we are watching.

Okuma is abandoned, Namie abandoned, but their street lights cycle. Grass is only beginning to push through the asphalt. The dinner bowls grow mildew, and a pig sups rotted fruit and candy bars until it falls asleep, head against a dead woman’s basket of groceries. A cat crouches inside a dryer, bony shoulders pricking through her skin.

The Haruspex says: The human brain has a limited capacity for sustained tragedy.

We cut photographs out of magazines and put them in envelopes, time capsules our children might be better able to deal with in 2050. Fukushima, a fistful of dog fur. A duckboard of words across dark water.

To read more, click here.