“ He’s always been attracted to broken things. He was the kind of boy who talked the bad girls through their problems, who defended them and didn’t take advantage. He was sensitive to his stuffed animal… Jalina Mhyana
“ Dante Alighieri wrote his first book in the prosimetrum genre – La Vita Nuova – in 14th century Florence. Since I’m compiling this collection – my first indie publication – in Florence, just blocks fr… Jalina Mhyana
“ I can’t pray or weigh my words right; doomsday is here my friend, but you’re immune. We sufferfor you. I’m weaving crowns of sonnets, dreads;a souvenir so you’ll never forget your friends. Jalina Mhyana
“ We could scan each car for terrorists and lovers she could lean into my camouflage her head resting on woven trees. When they come for her body she could run deep into my uniform into the forest of me… Jalina Mhyana
“ With each kiss in the cold house we swallow clouds of breath – exhaled spirit, speech bubbles we’d rather lick away than fill with words. We run naked from room to room, keeping the walls warm. Our bo… Jalina Mhyana
“ Transparent tubes divided Phil’s blood into shades of red, fading to straw colored plasma. I watched his fluid swirl past his shoulders and disappear into machines. He offered himself to blood banks a… Jalina Mhyana
“ I can’t remember what I’ve done with my lingerie. I look in the containers under my bed, as if my sexual self has been relegated to the wrong side of the mattress. I imagine my husband’s sexuality dow… Jalina Mhyana
“ If I must die young, bury me in a music box. I’ll be the pale ballerina with dirtin her hair. Attach my painless feet to metal springs and open the lid when you visit.Watch me rise and pirouette, my a… Jalina Mhyana
“ Offerings gleam beneath consecrated trees,boulders, and caves where Kami nature spiritsminister to congregations of saki cans, lotus root, and the glow of tangerines; still-lives silent as prayer. Jalina Mhyana
“ My husband and I have always been good at creative visualization. Before we quit drugs and got married he’d place tabs of acid on his eyes to see things that weren't there. I'd lay blank sheets of pho… Jalina Mhyana
“ Veins of ivy scale stones,find footholds butthe caretaker cuts earth short, peels creepers from Cotswold rock and props the deadhead to head so they won’ttopple like drunkson their moss-soft shadows. Jalina Mhyana
“ Everything was numbered: the lenses, the painterly sky, the milligrams of my panic pills. I had prescription eyes that allowed me to see better, and prescription panic pills that allowed me to play bl… Jalina Mhyana
“ The Wishing BonesA thousand grandmothers ago Pyrrha and Deucalion repopulated the world with rocks, bones of mother Earth, a generation of my ancestors strained from the mud of a drowned planet.But I’… Jalina Mhyana
“ I’m considering keeping the shutters open, even if people are spying on me at night from the apartment across the street. Especially if they are spying on me. It makes me feel less alone. I have a men… Jalina Mhyana
“ Our divorce was an optical illusion, surely, because I am often still there, in my old home with my family. I can so easily fool myself, even without a scope, a lens, a patch of sky to measure my trau… Jalina Mhyana
“ It dawns on me that maybe I'm just terrifically lazy; that I might be appropriating other people’s invisible sicknesses and disorders and scribbling them on the clipboard at the end of my bed to fool… Jalina Mhyana
“ All of the sudden, we were a grown-up married couple! Like little figures in a doll's house, we sat there dazed, in awe, wishing a chubby little arm would pass through a window and move us around, tel… Jalina Mhyana
“ Every Sunday behind bibles, virgins,soldiers tight against me, longing,and my pelvis rubbing gods'to the big black woman voices.Soldiers tight against me, longing,all that rising, sitting, kneelingto… Jalina Mhyana
“ I cut our paper dinner with a pair of scissors borrowed from the front desk of the hotel. I cooked with a spice rack box of crayons – sixteen colors. I seasoned the pumpkin pie with orange crayon, and… Jalina Mhyana
“ I was his “little girl with the William Burroughs mind,” his “secret fairy,” “female Frank Zappa” and “window onto a magical world.” He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our… Jalina Mhyana
