Someone tagged some trees in the park just like if they were a highway overpass or a boxcar in a train yard. I’ve got no songs for these orphans. I’ve got no money for gas. The hostess sat me in the corner by the bathrooms and I haven’t seen my waiter in hours. Don’t ask why there’s blood on that tree stump. Just eat the chicken. Drink whatever they bring. It’s up to you, you know. You’ve got to make the night fall and the moon rise. You have to keep the birds from flying nor

You were once my earth— blackberry jam, lilacs. In late summer dusk you called me for dinner. I was your kitchen. I became Mars, the planet of war, at war with your Venus and the men of Mars and Jupiter who orbited you each night downstairs, while Dad was away. Years later, I returned, a wanderer with only memories of home. I don’t know how it happened— my shell of anger broke. Maybe because you again made bacon and eggs, burnt eggs, but we danced at your bar, Dante's Circle.

Bloated, bloodshot eyes etch into the asphalt, and she tastes the grain, the tar sticking to her lids, pinching them back until the block becomes a terrarium broken open, bludgeoned until the onlookers become a piercing, inescapable screech, a skidding halt, exhaust rushing up her nose, and in that exhaust is a moment before, a stepping into the street, Frank Ocean on her headphones that makes her think of a fishing town, of her girlfriend visiting there for the summer, of th

Eyes closed, floating face to sun beyond the roiling breakers, I banter with my sister who drifts belly down on her boogieboard, both of us enthralled by the green swells, minnow-glittering clarity, and forgetting the stealthy, whipsawing undercurrents, predation masked by sparkle and sway, and so we fail to mark the dwindling shore, mistake drift for drive, chance for choice until she says, almost lazily: oh no, rip current, swim, parallel . We thrash in opposite directions.

...a tree is an example of the fourth dimension in nature ... a diagram of the familiar which we are as yet unable to read. – Ouspensky A stone is a window opening into itself extravagant with atoms and dark matter. A glove by the side of the tracks says: help forthcoming. Ladder leaning in air? symbol for lovers as yet undone. Birdsong a link to a kiss, to a city, a single black sock. The ocean is a machine for viewing time, a way of recalling a scorned lover

Fury was the weather in our house. It blistered the bread and mottled the cheese with mold, but we ate and ate till my mother and father rounded on each other — his salary, her weight, ringing the changes of resentment all the way back to their weekend-pass wedding, when his mother wore black. The silverware jumped when he hammered his fist on the table. My father was free with his hands, when it came to me: punches, a kick in the ass if his son was lazy, stupid, or a poor li

In my part of the world, February is still deep winter. It's cold out. There’s snow outside my window. Depending on the day, my driveway is coated in either ice or salt dust, and making the quick dash to the mailbox and back still requires a coat. Sometimes a hat too. And yet, here’s the Spring 2026 issue of Hole in the Head Review . We’re calling it the spring issue in the name of coming warmth, in the name of increasing daylight, and in the name of hope. Speaking of light,

Separated by five decades, excommunication and death; your image resembles me. The way your frown, your mouth and mine hold our truth in photos because we know no masks, we wear our truth like mad mugs in disgust for costumes poorly placed over our masculinity. Yours an early 1900’s corset black, mine, a faux battle dress and garrison to merino wool raspberry beret, not airborne but property of an airborne battalion in Fayette-nam, Fort Bragg, First in Flight, North Carolina,

In a tucked away corner in St. Boniface Cemetery, under the deep shade of the maples, two boys, young men, on a date, I assume, two boys sit so close that their leg hairs touch. Next to them, on the grass, a bottle, a paper plate, and a knife, the guys have been cutting up a melon, the flesh is in their mouths, the juice remains, sticky on their fingers, and it runs off the plate, and into the grass, and down into the soldier’s grave where they sit. Robert McDonald ’s first b

I had purpose once. For a small price, affixed and franked, I sailed the world, gave wing to words, knowing not wherefrom or to, nor the intent or how I’d be received. That was for others, the tongue that applied me and the hand that would unfold some meaning from whatever message I had tucked inside. Humble emissary, though I bear the face of my nation, mostly I lived duffled in darkness, shuttled between a here and there, scrutinized, sorted, then slipped through a tight sl

A theory: you deserve to be numb, but this is not your mother’s menopause nor your grandfather’s Republican. Despite the back fat, you must fight fascism amid your hot flashes. Another theory: examine the spring for its trauma response. Venus disappears, a 40 day retrograde. Another winter gaslights us into believing we are sad creatures who need more gray loungewear. Another politician gaslights us into believing complacency buys sal

I have no ear for holding the just right note, but any sound tends to carry, especially at night, especially in the cold. Nights like this I remember how my great-great grandmother knew to leave, and then to keep going. When I am frightened, I say the prayer her daughter’s daughter wrote and, often, the world frightens me—the way we human through it, wavering, in vibrant strokes. All vision is revision, a sort of seeming: this small house, these soft lights, this old dog, new

Antlers in the air like a pale boy’s hands at a metal concert. A sly, defiant look in its hollowed eye sockets. I could have been something like this, something mysterious and clean. I grew up walking the trails of Pittsburgh parks named for the industry barons who carved them into the city landscape: Carnegie, Frick, Mellon. Among those soot-soaked trees, I smoked and drank like something wild. I didn’t get picked over into bone. I came out of those woods, dazed and blinking

Heading northeast you will pass a wall of evergreens roughly the length of my ancestors, standing awkwardly on each other’s shoulders. Some came steerage, others sipped in estates, all of them live here, all of them tower above me. Each contains the naked seed, unafraid. For what would fear solve? The seed cannot be abdicated. Look for the mile marker that says how far from civilization we are. Take the second exit. By late afternoon, there will be obdurate shadows. Signs say

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass… –Edna St. Vincent Millay Strange to say I feel no fear, just calm readiness for what’s next, and here we go under a gray cloud layer earpopping into blue sky over Boston Harbor– we skitter like a waterbug in the Cessna. You know you can use a penny to replace a fuse , said my brother last week, and I thought, who has a penny? I don’t even have a quarter in my bag anymore. No change for the man on the sidewalk with the paper cup r

I begin bringing back the dead. No loose ends. Not even a church, or a steeple. Only the hairs of my son’s blonde beard nubbly as en grisaille graphite on newsprint coming further into focus at four in the afternoon as the winter day fades and his young beard invades. My hands open, welcoming or deflecting– open fans as kindling catches and crackles. With the smoke perusing the flue pale and gray, it is not impossible to remember. Once, catch of dull blade vibrated fro

The line of men who stand before you link arms through time and ocean over one Earth-sized planet away Digging deep enough you’ll be back in the country your parents escaped from Opportunities split evenly like rations in non-war time, peace sounding more imaginary with each life crisis Minutemen awake, too excited for glory through death or freedom No time to dream of the America where sons don’t understand fathers except through stories like how the family Zhao ruled Song d

The bawling leaves Don’t wake him, Nor slanting rain, Incessant patter Accusing him Of being dead But he is not that, Just passed out On the carpet— His mouth inhaling Blue smoke swirls From a candle Left unattended, And now flames Splash everywhere— Nightstand, curtains And he crawls, Like an infant, Into the hall, his eyes Refuse to open. No more lonely Night, no more Emptiness beside. No more missing Arms, watery warmth— Panes, doors sigh open. Mario Duarte is a Mexican-A

Gaunt in the desert, at a diner, he picks at prop food, assuring his companion he’ll be dead soon. Michael Shannon deep in ruts of makeup artistry, dusty, dressed up like a vigilante, and I’m waiting for a flu shot at the Minute Clinic, two blocks out of LA county. Fifty years ago, my father powdered his face for the stage, painted lines around his eyes, shellacked his brows. Expressiveness a virtue, subtlety another, like playing drunk by playing sober in a suburb kitchen, c

There’s an enormous elephant seal rotting in the town square. I don’t know how it got there, considering we’re at least two hundred miles from the ocean. It stinks to high heaven, but nobody seems to be bothered by it. Many of the local children have been using its bloated body as a playground, leaping up and down on its hulking blubber. A romantic couple daydreamed while reclining on its hind flippers. An old man brushed his thinning hair in the faded reflection of the seal’