I look across the street. I can see the bookstore. It’s right there. I think about kicking my way through the wall, making a sprint across the street. All before the marching band closing in comes stomping into view. Because after that I'm sunk. The flood gates will be open. And the entirety of the county's Christmas spirit will be let loose like a foul bowel movement from the asshole of a very old drunk. I decide against it.
OUTLAW LOVE
I can listen to “Thirteen” by Big Star and pretend
I am thirteen back in my flamingo
bedroom and a boy
would come to my
After the credits, I vacuum. I vacuum for hours and hours.
As the real world feels increasingly devoid of magic, we are correct to admire those writers who attempt to interject some magic back into it.
Transcendental with Reincarnation
I was a bank/ cashier who stole /a five-dollar bill/ I was Laika/ a stray selected/ no more than bark/ part-husky/ part-terrier/ canine space orbiter/
Everyone picks the chairs up and puts them in a circle. Then they turn the music on and you start to walk along the perimeter.
I think ten t-shirts would be too many to write about, but I’m perversely hoping that twenty-two is somehow not too many. A writer can, I think, pass beyond “too many” or “too much” to a sense of rightness or aptness. The paradox: More than too much is sometimes not too much.
I can't in good conscience watch a sixteenth season of Big Brother.
My family’s eponymous foundation is a donor to Columbia University, in whose MFA program in Creative Writing I was enrolled, but due to some substance abuse problems last semester, I had to drop out . . .
What if you spent a morning pulling scallions from the soil and washing beets in a metal sink?
The first seven years we dolled ourselves up as witches in black nylon and swampy grease paint.
I'm going to abandon everything / after this poem
Had a dream he was chained to a mountain while a buzzard ate his liver.
By the time Zoe and I started down the Overseas Highway, we had been living a nomadic lifestyle out of our 1995 Corolla for nearly four months.
What dispossessed me sat erect beside the checked quilt in fishnets.
Violette moved away from Calvin toward a group of rhododendrons.
Calvin felt calm.
He thought about God.
& no I'm still not thirsty / although i find myself / thinking too frequently / about jagerbombs
Writers are running out of good guy badges. Virtue signaling shame ponies and other cultural nyet.
I got my dad’s big nose and people make fun of me for it.
[victory lobe]
tiny towns or a dog could keep me pleased
for six months, then I’d wear felt triangles
look like December, have needles on me
molt on the plane to the
Because anytime is the right time for a haiku.
See John's last Adventure Comic, "The Lucky Texan," here!
