He wasn’t expecting how strong they’d be with their pale soft hands and their petticoats and their bowties and their cummerbunds. But when they stormed the ship, they threw aside lacy parasols and let fall monoculars.

The first time i took an Adderall I fell in love and was in love

for four years.

No one has all the answers. What could the man returning a fleece bodysuit say to the woman behind him getting ready to buy exactly the same item?

[Previously on... Part 6  |  Part 5  |  Part 4  |  Part 3  |  Part 2  |  Part 1]

father, son, and holy void

i no longer care
whose fault it was

which probably means
it was mine.

i could drive my car
into lake michigan

and wake up where
you

Sometimes the two memories grow conflated in her thoughts, especially in her dreams.

The past kept living inside me like a cheap Timex. “Where are you going?” the store clerk said. But I heard my father in my head, practically dragging me from bed to bon voyage me out of Newark when this terminal was merely stairs, no moving sidewalks...

1.

Walter Benjamin begins his essay “Unpacking My Library” like this:

“I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am.”

I can relate. This last summer, I moved all of my possessions from an

She almost said yes until she saw the stain.

bambi on Nov 6, 2015

He is the new dopehead in town..........WORTHLESS!!!!!!! !!!

Scrawled across the garage door in big red letters are the words "Die Snake!" 

I built a Ferrari inside my white mouth
The shape of it was blue  and up came the sun
I said hey, Ferrari and with my white mouth   huffed it good, huffed it pretty
The throat of your pale moon heartscape contained me

For the thousandth time
I am describing our arms
and how they are
the perfect length

Please, let it fuck me if I have it. Right? Fucking USA, again. If one person is making a bona fide constructive statement, the other nine are making you their bitch.

Aimee looks back to how things were.

You scare me kind of           your admission of an emo phase  

I like getting fucked in my feelings.

Nighttime near Fort Jesus.  We point our phones heavenward and hear about the latest rave death.

Eventually, I turned to memoir because I wanted to stay in scene. I craved space. I believe in the connection between poetry and memoir. It’s no coincidence that some of our best memoirs have come from poets: Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Lucy Grealy, Mark Doty, Maggie Nelson, and Sarah Manguso—that list could go on-and-on.

According to my parents, I was obedient from birth—I emerged in silence and then slept through the night. I was just never interested in rebelling—even as a “punk,” I got good grades and was always home by curfew.

And it is easy, so easy / to welcome them into the poem.

I didn't imagine you could grow into your harness, that it could embed in your skin, that you could plod one circle for so long that actually stopping would open up the ache in your body.  

The wind isn’t really knocked out of you. When you fall, you panic, hold your breath, tense every muscle. 

The killer dispatched the boyfriend easily in the kitchen, and then he had an idea.

Here’s a statistic: After reading Brian Oliu’s Enter Your Initials For Record Keeping, I’ve spent more of my life reading Oliu than playing basketball.

This was a painstaking choreography of getting whacked in the balls.