http://42opus.com/ en-us An online magazine of the literary arts. The farmer sends you and your children into the woods to puke / up his property. He says, you're wolf meat, now. You're dead / to meat. Hoof it pinkling mama, if you like, but beyond / that forest lies the forest, and beyond that, a tight shut eye / nothings you flat. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/dUTRG6DGdTg/when-something-is-rooted-in-you Sun, 5 Jul 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/when-something-is-rooted-in-you Take note and heed. My drab elastic shackle worried the bone / to dart. Poison tipped present day cervix fasting, preparatory. / Ugly Park looms, and I file its gates. Specific access: trees / denied, fur denied, zing and whoosh denied, all water denied. / Dark denied, particle-free oxygens denied, nutrients denied. / Girls, boys, tom-toms, flowers, spoons, ink, porcelain, fruit, / tone, flint, exploration, and tonic fetal compass denied. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/3GHgF7U4UYc/the-next-time-you-survey Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/the-next-time-you-survey Now I understand why. Someone turns loose the winds on me / and I'm a fountain of fire, someone tosses me into the sea // and I float in a boat of flames, someone pushes me under / and my lungs implode like hydrogen blimps. Every bronchiole burns… http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/gxvONo36Aas/purgatory Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/purgatory Where you cut your hand upon entering. / Where the affable proprietor warns you away from the saw. / Where the dog and the cat play beneath the table, / between your many legs. / Where the woman has painted her black hair gray. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/hUW5zoVkROM/in-dreams-and-in-love Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/in-dreams-and-in-love The nurse pulls my legs one way and my arms the other, positioning me to her liking. Her face is beautiful, like a magazine cover, and I lie across the cold metal table like a wounded dog, my side pressed flat against the surface. A long-armed x-ray device hangs over my head. She smiles, and I lose myself in her face, imagine myself wandering into Candy Land; I walk over her gumdrop eyes. My wife is beautiful too, but she's not here. When I told her I was going for some tests she said, okay—you're fine. She said nothing about my tendency to over dramatize or my need for attention. She didn't ask why she should care or if womanizing could cause cancer. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/YnAfZy5yqCY/new-lease Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/new-lease to the rain: it rains every night, clockwork / of my undoing, // vital to each iris as it was to my lantern of a self, / belly down in the low-slung fulcrum / of shyness; obdurate and unwieldy and refusing to say… http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/1MeGH6Ah1m8/my-entire-childhood Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/my-entire-childhood If it wasn't for the windows, it would all be so different. / The light forced to choose sides, shadows grow different. // A house of glass with wooden gaps wrapped by trees, / gray inside when it rains, at dawn no different. // Porches hold what's too nice for closets. Reminders. / Rackets and bats, balls that you're taught to throw different. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/6p6axYM1xWc/glass-doors Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/glass-doors Below the ice, frozen air, hibernating frogs. My cheeks alive with the burn, my ears. I wanted to touch air, awaken the frogs from their sleep. A bitter cracking sound. From the bottom of the pond, I called to you. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/rj3Sc2St7HE/ice-above Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/ice-above It was the dream of the / x-rayed rose, of the / dentist in Seville and his love / for a Flamenco dancer, of how / when he took an x-ray of her jaw / she refused to let go of / the rose she held in her teeth / while she danced. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/XgZGMlBcI8c/dream-of-the-x-rayed-rose Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/dream-of-the-x-rayed-rose Bryan Hurt: The historian and literary critic Hayden White has said that all historical narrative (biographies, journals, chronicles, etc.) are forms of fiction, no more or less so than their literary counterparts. For you (a) what are the reasons for, and advantages of, exploring the past through the form of the novel? And (b) why use the past (i.e. "actual people") at all? T.C. Boyle: I agree most emphatically with Mr. White. Which is part of the fun I'm having with The Women and other historical narratives I've pursued. In the present case, we have actual people doing actual things as reported in newspaper and biographical accounts, but their actions are filtered through the recollections of the book's editor, Tadashi Sato, who responds in footnotes to the rather odd text he's received in translation and amplification from his grandson-in-law, the unpublished Irish-American novelist, Seamus O'Flaherty. Where, one wonders, does the truth reside? Not simply the truth of fiction, but the truth of history. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/Ol4SVgPbU2U/five-questions Mon, 8 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/five-questions Would you search for the source / of god, which is the mouth / and possibly many-tongued, // or for the nest of the swan, / which is a large, open bowl, / a grass house & honest? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/1mRVwUBj0xI/if-given-the-chance Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/if-given-the-chance Start with a bird—a blue heron / coasting over the reservoir— / and a tree—a loblolly pine, / planted for paper and pulp, / dropping its rusty needles. // What does it take to be awake / in this particular world? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/NutZXh0ExBg/june-meditations Tue, 2 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n2/june-meditations The winter it is past, and the simmer comes at last, / And the small birds sing on ev'ry tree: / The hearts of these are glad, but mine is very sad, / For my love is parted from me. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/ddIFw7c8BpU/the-winter-it-is-past Mon, 1 Jun 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n1/the-winter-it-is-past Your skin's gone Mahler. I'm a toxin in your throbbing, // I'm spindle to your tumble & speak fluent blue heron // & not just with the radio, no. The white-handed gibbon // goading the night resounds in caged stages. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/Lh88E45bdlA/dear-animal-collective Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n1/dear-animal-collective By the time I finished writing, you had disappeared inside me. An absence bounded by the imagined shape of your skin. The body only token of the thought that creates it, yet I counted years by those touches, those bruised moments of light. Plankton sparking in the suffocating cold. I opened the ocean's windows against the lateness of night up there… http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/42opus/~3/eHURNKfgrp4/dear Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:01 PDT http://42opus.com/v9n1/dear