I keep coming back to the church.  

I tell you I wish my dad would come out as trans like Caitlyn Jenner &/or late-in-life gay like my ex-boyfriend’s father.

On your way home from work,
you stop at a liquor store for smokes.

legs apart, wrists willing: I am teaching myself to love sasha grey

for Rachel Corso

Have you tried all our salsa flavors before?
This is mild (not medium), this is spicy, this is verde
(That means green), this is volcanic, this is you

Not listening.

My new friend interrupted me to say, “You seem like you live like a real artist.”
My new friend had already been twice published by The New Yorker.
I thought maybe she had confused me with herself.

Let the okra go to waste, steal oranges from the
corner store. I'll tell you that I love you like I've
loved no one else. Our bodies are made to be
useful, move fast. The fastest man in

Karl Barth

let's forget the time we fought

and just say

that i have a specific kind of fear

it happens

sometimes 

when i am in the club

thinking about the pieces of my

i'm fucking useless and there's nothing going for me
*parents call*
everything's amazing, i'm the best i've ever been

wow it's late. i'm so tired
*yawns*
better eat a

Painting of a Vietnamese restaurant lunch menu.

Painting of a woman being pulled out of a river
by her hair and she is smiling and her hair is dry.

Painting of a war-torn meadow:

The summer you learned who was dealing what. You were applying to programs, your pointillism, neat in ink, when a wind disappeared your drawing.

the sky is gray and you will not stop talking
about balance
this focus has become your baby
for at least the past three days
last week it was tarot cards 
and a techno

All I wanted was the haze of a worn gown / of sleep after the scrape of that / honey-sipped night.

All summer the future had been coming for us like a thunderstorm at which turkeys look up and drown in the rain.

I hadn’t had any alcohol to drink in forty-two days.
I had told myself I wouldn’t drink for thirty but once you stop doing something it’s hard to start doing it again.

I agree to an extended death

I am yelling out the windows

of this speeding automobile

This has to stop— / you're a year dead. I shatter the mirror // with a glare, pace the hall carpet, / but others arrive by dawn, agitated // by thuribles, syllables scattered from / pulpits, daughters buttoned into pastel.

 fuck me here on this scabrous mountain while we all watch each other among sacred olives fuck away desire.

Watching the blood drain was the moment she knew/ that she didn’t have it figured out."

Tanja and I were competing to see who had moved the most as a child.
“I know of at least fourteen places we lived before I was eighteen,” I said.
Tanja started naming places she had lived. She kept naming her grandma’s house over and over, between every place.

If I too am a void into which/She finds the solace of vanishing.

yesterday I bragged
about having a friend

It's like how falling in love never leaves a good taste in your mouth. 

I can only remember smoking weed with Steve once.
It was either right before or right after I married my daughter’s father.

My sense of regret is the dog
you remember with immense fondness
but that you no longer know.