let us use the Fibonacci sequence to understand
why 10 coffins became boats atop the surface of Alum Creek on Christmas Eve

and why Mamaw spent all of 2015 saying bell-bottoms were coming

This boy has never been in love. He takes his phone to bed, a ghost or a third hand, he can’t say. Can anyone, anymore, the world being what it is? 

He yearns as the hours creep. Desperate to mimic

after fiona apple

i've waited many years— i didn’t know i was waiting— my myself waited til no one was looking, and it ran, and it ran and— 

all my selves run from me. when i look up they’re

Mama says mad freezes your face, so little girls with feelings be careful. Anger shows ugly over time, lines between your brows or pulling down the corners of your mouth. Girls should smile, say

On Sunday morning, at eight central in middle Tennessee, I watch the Grand Prix. This season is the 70th anniversary of the FIA Formula One World Championship, which feels like enough of a reason to

Maybe I’d hang out in the locker room and find someone who would treat me better. Maybe I’d go to Taco Bell and eat in the parking lot.

This is the Santa crushing it on Etsy.

This is the Santa denied unemployment.

This is the Santa whose Zoom background brought his therapist to tears.

This Santa doesn’t give a shit—he’s a

We’re spinning Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas in our den, a small extension the previous owner built by dry-walling in the original porch's 1959 concrete border. We erected

First, I visited my father’s house. After I returned home, my mother asked me to bring her there in the dark of night. We got on the highway, drove north, then took the second exit, but that was all I

She lives with her mom

two states away

and I wish this was all

I've failed to teach her. 

I’m now constructing a mental pool for how long these two can keep up the corporate veneer before they go insane or at least pop Gene in the teeth or at least say Okay you’re done no more pineapple and then whisk away the tray of pineapple Mom and I have not stopped noshing and ogling and noshing...

rsvp

for sacha

you’re a bound cloud
mist locked down    skipped
across the lake, I can tell

I woosh your eye’s pallet
missing calls      flatten
hunger      a slow drawl
boy  with

Luxury

This September the cool
air has come quickly
and I’m in love with how
it crawls into my belly,
smooths its long creases
on the bones of my esophagus.
What a luxury — to feel
   

1955

Nothing is earned unless something is lost. You lost your father in a car accident, as mommy explained. You are less than a year old and don’t have language for anything, much less grief. The

Once, during practice, I shot the most beautiful double-leg on my best friend and jackhammered us both into the mat, eyes swimming in twilight.

daughter

Her mother sometimes talks in her sleep
while she, so it’s told, whimpers or stretches.
Her brother twitches restlessly through the night.
He’s got finer hair and stronger teeth,
their

When Michael left for the West, I experienced what in Portuguese is known as saudade, an intense nostalgia for a person.

There’s always a man, somewhere, taking out the trash, his light blue jeans rolled above his ankles; waving at his elderly neighbor watering her tomato plants; picking up the morning paper and

CHIAROSCURO

-

Your hand and its physical touch
fuschia as you brush

The inside
of desire and nothing

I'll say it
on the skin of your tongue

Name and unname
your eyes and their

Why are we so very unwanted, but somehow always wanted by the worst of things?

sour

i wanted
in the way
that want follows

bedraggled
a half moon
of bites

it starts
like this
slowly

rara saw
FIRE FIRE
in my eyes

hard to describe
to you who
no longer

The first time I went rock climbing, I lasted 30 minutes.

“Here’s the thing. You can’t be doing this. You’re 38 years old. You’re a compulsive liar. You have cavernous molars. And you’re already being tailed by the police.”

We listened to the fathers sitting on the front porch of Hurd’s, smoking cigarettes and talking baseball until sundown. It was our one final glimpse of our world before it was rebuilt.

On Shaving my Legs for the First Time

the offending hairs that sprout from dark skin
like unwelcome ants that toil through the night

hairs that signal virility on my father’s chin
draw taunts

It was late, and he’d roll out of the parking lot and speed down the hill, sliding through winding backstreets with no streetlights, careening all over the road like he thought us coming face-to-face with death would make me feel better about working at Walmart.

an immigrant love letter

this is a love letter

     to jasmine rice     and soy sauce     in the ethnic aisle     to the crisp

     melting     of duck skin in my mouth     you taste     the

I smile now, waiting, always waiting, for you to reappear and remember me ...

The holidays loom and I’ve got two weeks off work. Last Christmas was pretty quiet. Not much family left. Karen was the one with the big family. I enjoy the church service in the morning. The kids

My wife and I are in pretty deep with the Mac. You can tell because we call them "the Mac."