A ground spinner in the shape of Saturn which promises its rings are sexier than all the emperor’s concubines combined, than all of your wishes fulfilled. Poppers and fountains. I think my boss’s daughter groomed me. Rich kid calling in the help to get on his knees and pleasure his betters.

I didn’t want anyone else’s cynicism rubbing off on me and diminishing the essences’ effects. I knew, I had to believe.

I asked him to bring me some nachos from the mini mart he worked at. We had rebound sex on my futon.

The night of the party got off to a bad start when Shawna forgot she already took her anxiety meds and popped a second pill to calm down.

Some spit clogged in my hair and snot dripped down to my mouth.

Sadness pervades. That's of course nothing unusual, sadness and poetry are bosom buddies.

A giant home, all cubes, angles, and no soul. Whose party? Whose house? There was a man who resembled Jesus on cocaine floating around in a scarlet bathrobe. His name was Maximus and he said he does IP acquisitions. Why’s everything in this town so damn vague?

The official San Francisco LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER PRIDE parade was the social highlight of our year.

You see Truth in yourself, and you realize we’re all having this complex, beautiful, and sometimes very dark human experience. Nothing is original. We’re all in this together. 

Put simply, Swinehart writes like Wallace, and this similarity reminds me of something Wallace once said in an interview with Richard Powers and John O’Brien about his ideal reader: “If stuff is going well, it feels like I’m talking to somebody. Or like there’s somebody there. And I think it’s somebody rather suspiciously like me.”

if i / am left with lack, let it be / infinite, stretching further / than any man’s tongue

Sometimes I wake up to my own asthma / making small morse codes.

if you listen to duran duran while prancing around in nature and it's mostly overcast, you will feel like you're missing, but not loved enough to be put on a milk carton

Amazing fucking Grace, 

tell them 

how you’re production 

and I’m consumption

and how we mess around 

with gender roles 

Every morning I’d wake up, walk to Target and take a hangover dump in their nice clean bathroom

It's easier for me to write a poem wherein I don't have to reassure my reader that I'm going to be okay, because I don't know the answer.

James served ten years in prison. His crucial impasse occurred a week after his life in the clink—under a neon sign that read Green Goddess.

I know nothing
of what you’ve
become

“They don’t mind you sleeping with their wives?” I asked

Dash wore a jean jacket. He’s been wearing the same one for 15 years. The one in his Tinder picture. Dash, 29, one mile away. He sent me a screenshot of that, even though I had gone off online dating.

“Nice? Becca threw a drink in a guy's face for touching her ass last night, and you missed it because you were off talking to a nice guy?” She used air quotes around the word nice.

Jimmy was dead, and I had slept with all of the eligible coworkers.

I give them all a careful look and say things like, “Oooh, this is an extra special egg.”

Finally, one small voice from the tiniest of the nieces near the couch squeaked, “Fuck Gregor.”

Rehab was called Willow Springs

Now when I see someone hurting, from the loss of a lover, I never say, “You’ll get over it.”