I did become very close to many people in the McSweeney’s universe. A lot of those people were great, and a lot of them were just ambitious people with no integrity whatsoever.

Dolphins are too good for this world, I think, as I reluctantly, fearfully, kiss one on its domed rubbery mouth while someone snaps a picture.

One day her daughter says to her mom, in front of you, that she wants to go to art school, just like you. And it is the first time you realize, her mom does not want her daughter to be like you.

Motioning the stone girl over, she
deadpans, “It’s grenadine, not blood.”

Walking through the dense forestry of unrefrigerated 24- and 30-packs, Pete was in search of something that would stand out from the rest.

He looks at me a little like how the alley cats look at the mice behind the house, but I don’t mind.

I try to imagine the various people the specks of bubble gum had belonged to. Try to give them faces and purposes.

I can’t imagine anything better or worse than whole-hearted devotion.

When the angel came I was young.

gen x girls grew too cool to touch and millennials gayed the world the rest of the way limp in their piteous attempts to save it.

“I like the way how you wriggle when
Your mind doesn’t agree with your heart”

The hangover was ruining the romance. Last night I woke up a friend and made her drink wine—Chateau 2016. I had to deal with my nerves somehow.

KS

Our translation of home.

He had lost his virginity to nothing less than the beast of the swamp.

and now i teach street

kids from akron how to

use google docs, and

how to express themselves

What’s your name? Like an oak
I want to carve a heart
into our washing machine.

as all my lovers
fly out of my chest

We started as open, NOT poly. This was a very important distinction to us, despite not having a working definition of either types of relationships. It was, we both agreed, substantially less cringe

Definitely one poet holdover is just being a magpie for weird

I do this because I need a hobby. Because hobbies are things you do when nobody loves you. I watch movies too.

Mysterious beauty spot the farra on cheek.

You’ve heard of flightless fish that get flung out of
the water for wanting something special

Iron isn’t gold, but who cares? Pass me the luster, 
the hammered brass & the Perspex glitter.

By March of 2016, my cousin Josh and I were practically flat broke. We’d been having an incestuous and adulterous affair, one that elevated his title to “cuzband” (he hated that term). Four years

There was a week when my grandma was gone, I had the whole place to myself, was drinking the regular Coca Cola classic and the half sized baby Coca Cola and brought the Abercrombie pictures out in the open on the second floor. I meditated.

Sometimes I think I won’t understand what it is that I’ve lost until I write a book about it.