On Penguins in Brooklyn

the protagonist feels like
she’s never leaving,
stuck on a moving walkway
in the middle of cincinnati
international airport
in kentucky,
headphones dangling,
she

Equivalence

How heartbreaking to find irises tilting
to full bloom in one direction
as if waiting for someone to come
down their path are one symptom
of light’s partiality. A heart

montreal

baked brick, dark bread,
breath sinking into a hot, grey bath when
caught in smoke between compartments
on the metro. pink lights from
the townhouse on rue de rushbrooke
blinking away

The other thing Belle did
Was burn three holes in my thigh
With her cigarette
Revenge for the chaos I’d caused

September Dream

An eternity, for the Asphodel, is a brief few
months. It’s been a decade, as the crow flies,

ten days on Venus, ten Venus days,
each, longer than a year.

When I’m without

Gut reno

Take down to the studs. Dismantle walls, yank up floorboards, rip roof till the black chasm of foundation fills with sun. What could be illuminated. Scrape for bone and craft from it a

I WANT TO THANK YOU

for unbottling my aged Mandarin with each 晚安 / for cooking me these sardines / strewn on a
beach of rice, their eyes still intact / I want to thank you / for carrying that

I’ll Always Make Love to the Mississippi.

We bruised
my knees on the bluff.

I’ve disappeared into the current
of loving nothing
but tainted water lapping against rotten fish
against a rocky

Stuffed cracks in ground with paper towels

I used to chew on blocks of wood
crying that the dentist has gone away from town.
*
My mouth would open wide
for sparkling birds and insects to enter

“Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp Make Out, Eat Fried Chicken”

They are busy galocher-ing on 2nd Avenue
I am on the sidewalk looking at the sky

They are stopping to wipe their mouths
it

I do not know why I am unbuttoning my shirt in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. How quickly memories shelve into one another, like shale reassembling itself. On the other side of the street, two

i'm in love with the thousand yard stare
deeply towards the worn fold
of the catcher's glove

I pause from scraping frost
off the car, and watch my gray
emissions wisp away

into the chill. I miss strict
seasons, and knowing
what to wear. Last week, it was 72.

When will summer

A Hopeful Young Man on a Job Interview

I’m broke and eating chocolate ice cream out of a novelty helmet
I’m sweating because I’m wearing a sweater in the heat
to cover up the insane poison ivy on

Just that instant
when thinking becomes
too much

             What happened to me
is probably less interesting...

Drive-in movie theater, Merrillville, Indiana, 1989

Field of Dreams on a screen bigger than every building in Merrillville,  

my brother and I eating chocolate sundaes from mini Dairy Queen

Kid Glove

Baseball?
            he says motioning a throw.
            We head to the front yard,
            toss it back & forth.
            The ball smacks our gloves—
            his

In Praise of Hands

I miss hands. I miss their flimsy, awkward quality –

the way one looks when offered while still searching

for a reason. I miss being young, lining up after the

"[ / ]" and "[ / / ]"

mom says I smell like smoke
I say she smells someone else

In the middle of
the street is everyone
you know.

through the years when what I needed most 
was to hold my father’s hand.

Two men smoking cigarettes on Bleecker could mean anything
to each other.

I hadn’t notified Interview magazine abt it
I hadn’t tweeted abt it either
I wasn’t post alt lit
Or a genius