After I finished the reading, I waited a couple minutes, browsing books, until I left the bookstore - alone. All the women who’d watched me, who were so supportive, so attractive, were huddled in a group. They were friends, they were a community.

Thank you for calling that curiosity “innocent.”  I like the sense of “innocent" as “guileless,” rather than “not-guilty,” since the poems sketch both our ignorance and our complicity.  I

My sheets got dripped on. We didn’t finish all of it. I fell asleep with the taste of it dried around my lips. Sweet, for a little.

Chicken à la King

I bit. We bred a snoutless dog to lead
us to the prize. We groomed ourselves
with yearning floss. You swam
through scum in the retention pond
and called it flamenco.

Once upon a time there was no sex, but sex was everywhere: in Laura's 6th grade locker with her roll-on deodorant, in Dr. Davidson's walk—slow and tight-calved, in Mr. Robinson's guitar—Cat Steven's "Wild World" each afternoon before the bell, in Mrs. Roger's wavy, knee- length red hair—smelling of Wella Balsam and cigarettes. 

now the poem is a woman

On November 13, 2012, Hugo Dos Santos awoke shortly after 1 am with an urgent need to urinate. He got up from bed and took two steps out into the hallway when he saw three small creatures in

The Record
Fear
Label: Slash
Released: May 16, 1982
Length: 14 songs, 27 minutes

This is about a dead guy. But it’s 1995 and the dead guy isn’t dead yet. He’s driving. A black

My grandfather, his English name was Benson. As the houseboys opened the gates, he came out on the balcony and fired off a shotgun, boom, one or two blasts.

I remember seeing Aladdin on Christmas Eve with my friend Kylie when I was seven years old.

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

Carefully open the wrapping paper. Inside is Teddy Ruxbin. See his stupid face on the box. Fuck you, Teddy Ruxbin. He reads you bedtime stories if you put a cassette tape in his abdomen.

I grew up in grass but here / everything is bladeless, // hair thinned past feathers, / sheets slick enough to grease a boar.

They sat on the grassy bank, clothes clinging to their wet bodies, watching the river flow. A few raindrops splashed on the surface, tiny dimples rushed away downstream. Neither of them bothered to point out that it was going to rain.

I was at a party for the end of the world. I came so I wouldn’t be alone. I guess so did all the other women. They must have known there’d be no men at this party because they wore beautiful

my parents taught me to say ‘surrender’
in a dozen foreign languages.

I’m in the parking lot, I’ve got Sarah’s prescription, Sarah’s my wife, and I see him.

Osama bin Laden.

 Please, I need those thick markers from the craft store, you know, the ones that color far away from each other; you turn the corner into golden golden golden any night

“I saw you by the river last night,” Amy says, her eyes still closed and half-covered by strands of almond-brown hair. “Why didn’t you follow me?” 

my angst is still young / and highly flammable / something interrupted / meant to be read out of order / one chord change to another