It doesn’t make the sound that you think it would make. I mean, I figured it would be loud, or top-heavy. But it sounded like almost nothing, like water dripping from a shower faucet three rooms

Before roosting in the city, starlings dive—
five thousand deep in flock. Like cells they follow the
law of localization. Bound by surroundings. Step into a

crowded elevator and take on

“We made out once,” my sister says. I thought “I was in love with him for a night.”

In the afternoons, I stripped off my boyish clothing and watched back to back episodes of Saved by the Bell, feeding my unhealthy obsession for Kelly KAPOWski. The perky brunette with her slim ankles and come-hither hair tosses was the ultimate teenage bombshell. 

I wanted to focus on the real victims, unthinkable crimes against them, but I kept coming back to those batting cages, to that uniform in Coach B's house.

The woman sat on the train wrapped tightly in her coat. She stared at herself in the window and eyed the other passengers.

Later that evening, when confronted about my absence, I told her that my grandfather said I looked sick and should go home. His senility always made him my reliable scapegoat.

Halfway through Pilates class, the teacher decided to use telepathy. She said she was sick of the sound of her voice, always repeating the same cues. 

thinking about how all of it started

thinking about how the poems ends

Christopher Boucher’s new novel, Golden Delicious (Melville House), is a kind of referendum on all we presently hold dear in fiction. Its emotional hold on the reader is very strong, but its avant-garde methods critique those special effects by explaining what they’re doing to your feelings while they do it, which somehow only makes the book more sad.

Dibs

In Chicago, we use dibs to take
ownership of what we will never own.
Traffic cones, rusted patio chairs, strollers,
a pair of orange Home Depot buckets.
Flanking the concrete.  We

It’s clear that most of these students hate Sal, Dean, and Kerouac.

We turned off the game and drove to the mountains, a dead dog in the backseat

Much has been said about that smile. I'm not in the business of describing smiles.

I couldn’t sleep when we shared a bed anyway, so most nights, when he was deep enough, I wriggled out of his armpit to lay on the floor, play Pokémon until sunrise caught on spots in the window.

Because Math! 

1. She told him to shut the window-slats. Every shred of light should be brushed away. She wanted to feel invisible.

Here, in the green glass light of the parlor, Swaingrove cultivates its memories.

Because my father dips himself / into the vagina of a Swedish woman // and is never found again, / my mother's heart dies.

QUERY 5: About half the time, your APOSTROPHES and your QUOTATION MARKS don’t curl around the way they should— “ or ” , not " , and ‘ or ’ , not ' —which is how I know you are writing half of all your articles on your cellphone.