If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

No one should become a new parent at my age.

It must've been the late nineties. I was collecting welfare at the time. I couldn't have been more then 17. Summer vacation was coming to an end. The high school I attended was close to my

1. you never wanted to be the kind of person who balked when people entered your home without taking off their shoes

No one even realized Plain could make such a comeback. Years before, it tapered off in grocery stores. Chips. Donuts. Even Coca-Cola. All were taken over by ranch, chocolate, lime. 

Today I kiss her knuckles & we lumber home like mammoths.

It is not the anniversary of her death that wrecks me but a day some weeks before it. It is the anniversary of the day I sat on my porch, barefoot, polyester graduation trappings in hand, and thought to call her but then did not because I was too busy. 

Lyrical lines of color dripping down: a chemical skyline.

Out by the park, I say, I’ve got your blood in me, and you look at me funny, like you are waiting for this to be another mediocre joke, and it is, somehow, but I don’t know the punchline yet. 

“Isn’t there something called ‘Pizza’?” I whispered to my girlfriend one night, awake from a dream; she kissed my forehead, her breath heavy with the sweet smell of cilantro, and sent me back to sleep.

The only piece of advice I’ve got for anyone is to shout your precious name into the rain & wait for a response. 

If this album were a place, it would be a penny candy store: high fructose and courting an overdose. 

I was birthed alongside a digested McMuffin evacuated from a parallel pipe—my mother’s last pre-labor meal. She opted for a natural birth, taking only an aspirin, never uttering a complaint.

"Don't tuck your art in." Jamie Foxx

H-E-double hockey sticks

He’s called the rat king because of the actual rats  that hang from his shoulders like epaulets.

When I told you I wanted to file a police report for our missing love, you turned to me with your best impression of a blank page. 

A garment can withstand swell if the body can withstand laceration

I feel blessed. I thank God with a capital G for my success.

(The baptism.)

The first time I had sex
my hymen didn’t break
and you missed your bus

We wrote Mary Karr on
the margin of my arm
in pen

I washed around her
then let you lick

The president lands to a reception line & it’s all already campaigning again always. The president lands & I already took a shit this morning.

In this piece, the sculptor will sculpt herself sculpting. 

This album feels like rain; like those moments when you are half asleep in bed reviewing the day.

The bank took the car but they didn't take my legs, so this morning I stole the neighbor kid's bike and pedaled into town. 

At dawn on Saturday, our powerlifting group arrived at the locker room to try on singlets.

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart (bonus points to the photo nerd who knows that quote!).

Nathan Pearce is our