Torn textbooks at Widener Library or seeping 
Inkwells those Cajal axons 

out in the Everglades, no resurrection
just a rotting boy's corpse

the day i was born i was yellow and poisoned and anxious.
and they put me under a sunlamp and burned it out of me.

Drug Plane

I was fifteen, then sixteen, then twenty. My high-school friend was my now college roommate. His stepfather was less mysterious but more compelling. He was having trouble with his

We are like dogs in a dog park, smelling each other, breathing together

We're asked to think about examples of unconscious bias and I think about the guy who goes to

Heaven but it's Chinese.

Last spring was the last spring.

Neither a drop of white wine into the danube canal, nor a gunshot through the roof of my mouth, but something in between

I am more deserving of your love than he is. My heart beats twice the size of others. 

I put away my matchsticks / and hammer. You remain, standing / the same as you were.

when I laugh, you perk up
like a misted lily

there’s always something new to say

At Bryn Mawr I was taught never to use CAPS / I dawn my lips / and paint my toes / red as a manifestos

behold a God's eye in storm where tapping rings / finish me.

Lies are told beneath silvery moons
And far beyond sad boys and girls falling in love.

Before the internet had all the answers,
before Siri, before Alexa,
before TikTok teens with ring lights
explained the universe in under thirty seconds—
I had my dad.

Dad was my Wikipedia.
Dad

Look longingly
out the window. Wait for myself to come home.

County Holding

In county holding, girls recite the future from memory.

Sleep is an escape. Blankets for those with perfect zeros.

In county holding, the girls, they’re always using the

I mean,
it’s only love.

It doesn’t have to hurt.

but allwhite right unvexed real people-pleaser

I think the interview went pretty well, although at one point I remember asking the interviewer to speak slower this time, using simpler words, words with no syllables if possible. 

Please dont forget to play. Can you remember 
the last time you danced?

Wind in the ears like / Water ungathering / In and out of baskets.

The door is broken, the home is not 
as we begin to compare our splinters 
before our squinting eyes.