Eventually, I turned to memoir because I wanted to stay in scene. I craved space. I believe in the connection between poetry and memoir. It’s no coincidence that some of our best memoirs have come from poets: Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Lucy Grealy, Mark Doty, Maggie Nelson, and Sarah Manguso—that list could go on-and-on.

According to my parents, I was obedient from birth—I emerged in silence and then slept through the night. I was just never interested in rebelling—even as a “punk,” I got good grades and was always home by curfew.

I didn't imagine you could grow into your harness, that it could embed in your skin, that you could plod one circle for so long that actually stopping would open up the ache in your body.  

And it is easy, so easy / to welcome them into the poem.

The wind isn’t really knocked out of you. When you fall, you panic, hold your breath, tense every muscle. 

The killer dispatched the boyfriend easily in the kitchen, and then he had an idea.

Here’s a statistic: After reading Brian Oliu’s Enter Your Initials For Record Keeping, I’ve spent more of my life reading Oliu than playing basketball.

This was a painstaking choreography of getting whacked in the balls.

Yes, the girl says, / thus entering into an unspoken agreement / that a black shirt with prints of golden parrots and martini glasses / is the only requisite balm.

somewhere on the internets, in a dusty archived sent folder and a long forgotten inbox is our turn to Genesis chapter two verse eight 

When God is sleeping with his eagle, / we are like a woman with a peacock / under her arm telling the river hush. 

Sheila Heti’s words penned: BLOW-JOB ARTIST. I have always wanted to be everything to everyone.

At one point, Justin’s stick got swatted and went flying. He hesitated for a moment, before strut-skating to the bench. This is not something a hockey player would normally do, just leave an unbroken stick on the ice during a non-competitive game. Someone eventually pushed the stick over to the dark team’s bench. “Pick it up,” Tony heard him say. For a second, Tony thought Justin was talking to him. Turns out he was talking to his bodyguard.

I was on an evening walk with my dog when we came upon me neighbor, Rick.

The vet said that the humane thing to do would have been to let it die, to continue
doing whatever it was that I was doing. 

I come to you the way an animal finds a quiet place to die.

The one and only time I saw Herman French naked was when he was toweling off after a shower.  Herman was my bunkmate two years ago at Camp Thunderbird.  He had the smallest penis I’d ever seen. 

Jordan Castro writes about rapper Peewee Longway, memories of his dad and Run-D.M.C., his views on Christmas over the years, and some of his favorite Christmas rap lines.

Maybe I dropped it as I struggle to hold the box of Munchkin donuts and the lukewarm cup of coffee in my hands that I brought for you. Even after you told me not to. Even after you told me you needed space.

Christmas Past

Bill Murray has come a long way. His corner office is all black lacquer and polished chrome, a monument to late-80s decadence, a temple whose sole object of worship is money. His

Where is the sequel with everyone’s joy icon shown twenty years down the road, morphed into a cenobite, gnawing the bedpost it tied itself to, libidinously squelched?

I couldn’t sleep when we shared a bed anyway, so most nights, when he was deep enough, I wriggled out of his armpit to lay on the floor, play Pokémon until sunrise caught on spots in the window.

Like many other men in their seventies, my father has prepared a set of final directives.

I start with which would you rather as an opportunity to open up the conversation for a set piece I've prepared. In summer I might ask how does everyone like their air.

Say we're sorry!