getting a haircut in the year’s first month will cause the death
of an uncle eating fish will bring your family abundance
八 meaning eight sounds the same as 發 meaning wealth
& also hair eight

from
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO X

Prayer is what you do when you don’t know whether your animal will live through the night. Pink like Pepto-Bismol staining a goat’s chin. Everything lives and

On the street, the music thundered from an unseen source, day and night – but it was, oddly, only audible from the sidewalk. Once ensconced inside our house, we forgot about it, as we neglected so many external things during medical school.

You notice you’re being followed. Headlights in the rearview mirror—though they all look the same, these seem somehow familiar, like a pair of eyes you’ve seen in a dream.

A spoonful of vanilla ice cream crosses oceans of history. Hold that dollop on the back of your tongue.  Consider.

Today, nothing could be whiter than vanilla ice cream.  Vanilla means white.  It

Peter wakes up first and texts me, hi baby, hi boo, hi honey pie.

to gain followers I use my body then / I lose them with my poems

The puppies are back at WBC, and I’m third in line. 

The machine sleeps in the corner. Its dreams are projected onto large white walls where we watch them and record our reactions.

When you’re sad, you go to the ballgame. 

“Get in here!” yelled Grandma. “Carrot Head is gonna sing!”

Rain drags its cage / through the neighborhood. You / see nothing but // trenches. Rusty shovels, / the alien rocks sprayed / like genitals. 

I came home from work the other day and my next-door neighbor, Charlie, was sitting on a lawn-chair under an oak tree in his front lawn, drinking a beer, smoking a cigarette. 

Charlie said, “Hey

For weeks after, I watched California burn / out my window & on the evening news & the ash // in my cheeks became the only way/ to pronounce home.

McGuiness in bed with chow mien. Eyeballs floating in melatonin.

“Watch your back,” moans ceiling fan. TV glow damaging optic nerves, retina, etc.

Trapdoor in Benzedrine bottle on floor. Deep in

Every writer knows the rule of ‘write what you know,’ but the interesting thing is that you don’t really know what you know until you write it.

You joined in, and told Danielle that she should only serve us drinks in diamond pimp glasses.