his hands painted me purple along my jaw, under my eyes. i would freeze to his rigid words his dark stare, to a frown oh my silence when i could run, i surely ran when i could fight, i still took to flight shame is a ghost i freeze to the thoughts of some young days when i abandoned her to him. - With him boxed in pinewood, she asked; Are you glad? I said; I don’t know enough about death to answer that.

The Migrant by brassteeth, literature

Literature

The Migrant

With the dream in his mind he stood and wandered from his porch which had also been his parents porch leaving the smoking air and metal clatter of the neon kitchen to join the dark and buzzing atoms that made up the terrible night leaving, to trek along the flattened track of his land and then to the greater road that led to the river that might save him along the track and out-of-sight moonlit switchgrass cast speckled shadows across his steps and beyond his reach the silhouettes of young pine trees gathered in twitchy rows like anxious soldiers he met the wider road with silence but for his steps and thoughtful breath and the unse

The Safety of Ohio by brassteeth, literature

Literature

The Safety of Ohio

In the end through the dew-drops rolling down your freckled face you said let’s find a place where things cannot ever fall away, – and I just didn’t comprehend. By then I felt only invited as you surveyed the broken map of our histories so sudden you were so frantic to nullify each valley, to flatten every beating crest we ever climbed. I saw, your eyes divine your blood so urgent to hammer out even the minor corrugations of our pairing. (By then, the cold velocity of each of us had aged our faces and stole our weight) So - when upon the table that yardstick levelled out your eyes met mine (for the last

Back from the City by brassteeth, literature

Literature

Back from the City

when she utters Manhattan we silence ourselves the way clocks stop suddenly on funeral days or bodies learn of their true selves through trauma her gin laced parable has the room transfixed: dry hats on tables, soil-skinned believers bouncing between a place of TV myth and the honest heat of the days setting sun she is here and she is then. close and distant her island city both expands us and ages us backwards suddenly simple we are folksy and foetal and pink as one, we assert to evolve to wanderlust like pearls in salt shells that desire to become comets shifting across the dark sea of night untouched and unhinged before dawn peb

The Flood by brassteeth, literature

Literature

The Flood

when they finally returned the house had split along the outer corners water had burrowed under the floorboards knocking them up and into criss-cross patterns under their feet floated furniture had punctured the walls and he thought the whole abode had ran itself apart as if to flee from a crime a muddy line sat neatly across the windows bottom half so they could both see where the flood had peaked that night she couldn’t go to the child’s room instead she sat upon an old potato box in the place they use to call the living room – already numb from the doxepin she needed that morning just to make it back he walked

Traveller by brassteeth, literature

Faith and Philosophy by brassteeth, literature

The Defenders by brassteeth, literature

Literature

The Defenders

Today, I told my class that we would be playing a game. One that required a special visitor to participate. I had invited my friend Hassain to visit my classroom – he arrived wearing a cotton thawb and leather sandals. He had taken his taqiyah from his head and held it in his hand as he stood and faced the children. I introduced Hassain to the class. I told the children that this man was named Hassain and that he was very much the enemy of all children, he was extremely dangerous and he was not to be trusted. The children had never met Hassain before today but because they trusted me, they nodded to my description of him and were tha

Wide by brassteeth, literature

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