Search All Winners

I don't trust nobody

             but the land I said

I don't mean

present company

of course

you understand the grasses

hear me too always

present the grasses

confident grasses polite

command to shhhhh

shhh listen

Unlike the other countries, this one

Begins in houses, specific houses and the upstairs room

Where constitutions vibrate in the blockfront drawers,

A Queen Anne highboy, or maybe the widow’s walk

On a farmhouse hundreds of miles inland and believed

By the family to be a lookout for Indians though clearly

It was a pioneer’s conceit, fresh as the latest politics

From home: so much for that innocent thesis The Frontier.

“He has something of mine,” the man said.

With that, she turned to look at him. “Who are you?” she finally demanded. “Sergio called me to come pick him up, not you.”

“You don’t know me?” His voice pitched higher, edging toward frustration, maybe anger. “You don’t know who I am?”

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t.”

“He’s got my heart,” the man said, melodramatically holding his hands across his chest, but he sneered a bit when he said it. “He’s got a lot of things I want back.”

Copyright © 2006 by Manuel Muñoz. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved.  The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express permission is prohibited.

               titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.

thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride.

                            hyphy dancehall — no can

               hear tings demur.

titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofer

whine mih curvature: cause a road slaughtah.

                            ain’t neck breaking like dutty

               when she whine.

               titanium, boom shocka, kill di woofa.

thrash reverberating neatly polish mih ride. sih?

As Frankel muses on Progress in his Hillman Minx, Ed Markowitz wearily drives a rented Fiat to the Oriental Institute. He had not wanted to go on the day of his arrival, but this is the only time he can be sure to see Mujahid Rashaf, who is returning to Saudi Arabia within the week. Rashaf is an Oxford fellow and the son of a merchant prince. He will provide just the reasoned yet religious opinions that Markowitz seeks for his book, Terrorism: A Civilized Creed.

He climbed over the fence surrounding the Queen’s Pond, took off his clothes, and dived in, not caring whether a police squad would approach. The chill of water invigorated him as he waded through the lilies floating on top. He wondered how long it would take, if he allowed himself to sink, for the water to fill his lungs. He thought of monsters with long tentacles that supposedly lived at the bottom, and he imagined them tearing into his flesh. Would his wife be able to recognize the body?