how to wear a crop top to office depot

trying not to think of you

when i connect with someone

i start to fear rejection

because that’s what

i’m used to

not being famous

feels

I made eye contact, made the purchase, stored it between other magazines on my bookshelf.

1.

I found a copy of Spirit of Elijah by Wilson McKinley on the record shelf of the Goodwill in Bellingham, Washington. Like many of the thrift store records I own, I bought it because it looked

Because there’s a god for the water on your skin
when you’ve come from the lake. One for the absence
of flowers in a vase, for every pump and filter organ inside my dog

One god isn’t enough to

“YOU IDIOT!” I scream, but only in my head. For 25 years now I haven’t been able to speak my mind, especially not to a stranger. Enrolling in Glenda’s Eagle Training course is supposed to help, but for now I’m still a grounded hatchling teetering my way through week three of the seven-week program.

Heavy Metal Love Song

Street drafts off the two-tone carpet in my underworld            

Air so much wetter than the memory of it        sharpness of weather
spoiling for more life

Two buses

No Vision

Two teenagers set my state on fire
with a bottle rocket. We flee
between coasts like politics.
I work three jobs so I can buy
new brakes & a tattoo of a heart
shooting lightning.

“And there’s got to be some guidelines for this.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Lionel said. “So what are they? You just let me know and I’ll follow them. By God, I will.”
I didn’t have much for him. I sputtered some nonsense about my side of the refrigerator and if he saw Doritos in the pantry, especially the Cool Ranch kind in the blue bag, he should just assume that they were mine. But that was pretty much it.

There’s an elderly couple camped out in the parking lot of an abandoned Bennigan’s.

Full-sized, luxury RV, Weber grill, folding chairs, red Coleman cooler.

These folks have options, and yet they

On the street, the music thundered from an unseen source, day and night – but it was, oddly, only audible from the sidewalk. Once ensconced inside our house, we forgot about it, as we neglected so many external things during medical school.