Mark Statman's most recent books are the poetry collection, A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013), and Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of Jose Maria Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012). He is also the author of the poetry collection, Tourist at a Miracle ((Hanging Loose, 2010), as well as a translation, with Pedro Medina, of Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York (Grove, 2008).
He leans down and kisses the back of her neck. She and I both stop breathing. She is entranced. I am horrified.
They had called upon Allah for forgiveness. They had prayed harder—with their carbi. And, much more fervently than ever, they had beseeched Allah to bring Ado back.
So I gave him the meat, and the moment I’d put it down and stepped away, he pulled up the corners of his snout to show me his yellow canines and snarled at me.
While in the military service, my father was stationed at Army Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, where both my younger sister and I were born, a year apart.