please alert The

Paris Review that this wrenching November

is truly the cruelest month of all.

When was the last time she ran? At all? As a real kid in bare feet in grass at her grandparents’ house.

At least I was alone, I tell myself. There’s no one to miss the worlds I destroy but me.

the drugs didn’t wear off,
the guy she wants to get in bed
                                doesn’t really care.

when she was 6 she’d never touch cigarettes,
                                but drugs made her slip

He was a shadow, "A black braid of smoke" as Simic would say. No. That's too pretty.

washing the wound
in beer and poetry

She has a pliant diction, and always after speaking to her mother her accent takes on the squished together sing-song of Spanish. When I ask her who it was on the phone she says, “My mother,”

I call him “Morty” and he’s one of my most consistent companions.

Each morning when I wake, he whispers:  “Today, you die.”

Look, you smile too much or too little, both at the wrong times, and people don’t like you.  

Yellow 1 & 2

I will no longer keep you; I will remember you yellow

you have a beautiful yellow
ache, a scarf made of heavy eyelashes.
I keep you tucked in my backpack among
other

Things to remember:

Ghost Deer, Ohio

Ray St. Ray

Not every cry is a cry for help.

There is not one song
in my YouTube 
favorites 
sad enough
to endure this night
wearing my khaki
work pants 
with a small kitty
crawling on my lap

The internet is

I don't like the shirt you're wearing.
That's no reason to call me stupid.

the cat and i are watching HBO pretending time passes much faster than it does like how this guy has been in prison for 52 days but it's only been 11 minutes

i can't look at people on tv

A sponsorship for every spree.

You know you’re in the shit when you’re looking to fortune cookies for encouragement

For three days, I drive the city in search of PetCo. Day one, I tell myself that PetCo will be easy
to find. I don't find PetCo. Day two, I use the GPS, but despite reading the

Sign up for Match.com. You’ve heard it works. You’ve heard for one out of every three marriages, the couple meets online.

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

The walls, statues, and shrines of the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum are covered in offerings to the spirits—or loa—represented within. Plaques have pennies and dimes resting on their frames; there is a wishing stump filled with dollar bills. And there is lip-gloss everywhere.

And she doesn’t know a word of German, except “bier.”

One day I came across an inverted map of the Western Hemisphere. Cape Horn was in Alaska's usual position. I felt very disturbed, like air was flooding into the space above North America and

Likely I’ll fail to properly introduce Zachary Tyler Vickers’ debut, Congratulations on Your Martyrdom!, so I’ll make no fancy words about it: this collection of interconnected stories—comprised of

love becoming, like an apple,
this requires time, starred
blossom, then summer, the attention
of bees, grown men
bow their heads, concentrating
on the national anthem
in stadiums