Excerpt from the novel, Squish.

The nails on my pinky toes are just nubbins, really — sort of shapeless blobs of keratin that grow in a little pit at the end of each toe.

These Austrian cows
lying down vaguely chewing
grass what are they think

We tried training the Doberman abandoned a yard down with chemically flattened ham

But I have a million lights
I have two million actually
A whole billboard

I think Hemingway killed the subordinate clause because it looked at him slantward from the shelled nobility of an era that deserved Victorianism.

The boy is sprawled across the woman’s bed . . . 

Every day after your aunt points a 9mm Smith and Wesson at your head, you think about holding one in your hands. You need to feel that weight. 

She wasn’t a real pretty girl, but it was Valentine’s and a Saturday night and we had booze.

There were reports of a vagrant living in a bathhouse.

I don’t know if my husband and I are on the way to church or a hangover.

The bass line to “If I Was Your Girlfriend” curled into a smaller ball and pulled the thin blanket in tighter.

Tough to have a face / in the late weather of Empire.

We were in Hungary to see his grave, which I did not spit on, and I’m proud of myself for that.   

The night we part, not knowing when we will see each other next, we go out walking beneath a swollen, but waning, moon.

We are going to die still falling // for crap about berries, a glass of red wine. It could be worse.  We’re not suicidal, / smack fiends, Swazi.

At night, when everyone's gone, the dark looks like a scatter of tiny bullet holes above her desk in the shape of a heart.

Excise it.  Use a cheese wire . . . 

My cousin Anabella is almost 16. She’s into musical theatre. She posts pictures of froyo on her Instagram has four times more followers than me. Her favorite member of One Direction is Niall.

I'm the codebreaker from Lambchop-eating, Advanced, Crazy Spys. Or L.A.Z.Y.

My man shocked me by pulling out dirty magazines with pictures of fat black women called Black Tail. He had had the mags concealed in an oversize manila envelope.

Are the woods still there? The woods were still almost there. 

The heavy moon’s already almost halved itself, the month’s almost passed. I saw

a cat huddled, early this morning, by a

after vomiting
a small order of
onion rings and
chicken fries
from burger king

The Germans call it the downfall. The French call it sleep. The Polish just give you vague directions.

Jokes for People Who Had Good Fathers

Something about rock and roll music
and leaf blowing,              yard work

Dads who speak in puns and are called
Dad, probably but not

It’s also the story of a horse, which is a word but also a kind of animal.