after Charles Bukowski

When they first met dirty talk felt like solving timed coding challenges at a job interview.

Every orgasm I am not having is a poem in process.

She was the sudden presence that filled the delivery room like a creation spirit pressing his thumb to make a wrinkle in space.

The body rotates its symbols / like a stereoscope

I fall asleep on the First Date. It happens when we're cresting the chain hill of a roller coaster called Sallie Mae.

Sex would remain forever yoked to this school shooting, grief combined with an uncanny moment of clarity: life won’t be the same after this, regardless.

I’m flinging sparks at a desk 
in the cold cell of civilization’s midnight 
 

When he stands in the living room fully erect, wearing nothing but blue corduroy shorts cut off so high the pockets peek out, he holds a bicycle chain lock above his head victoriously, like a sword from stone; a makeshift weapon, we can see it’s stained with another man’s blood.

When I was ten years old something happened, an event I never understood

I've finished packing and am leaving. Ten, nine, eight, seven . . . .

I'm sick...

PS: My computer is really going nuts. If I can use one of your spare ones, I may need it sooner rather than later.

Sophie had recently gone through a break up. I don’t remember her ex's name. I do remember the striking legibility of the word VIOLENCE. 

I am torn with longing for many unnameable things.

I wasn't surprised that he told me he used to skate, everyone did, but it felt like I did take a bump when he told me I must be my father's son.

there was nothing special in the Library of Alexandria

One day at the school for disturbed children I attended, a boy lit his pubes on fire.

There’s something so sexy about a hot girl apologizing for my behavior.

Toothpaste dripped and stained the rubber grip. The bristles were yellowed, fanned out and frayed, like a spiky cleaning tool that should go nowhere near the mouth. Some of the bristles were actually hairs.

The first thing I killed was a coyote. Grandpa pointed out that the coyote was a mother. Her belly sagged a few inches above the grass. Her front right leg caught in a wire trap. Grandpa handed me his

At night, we lay on unmoored mattresses, pressing hands over our eyes to block out spears of light from the street. We cursed our naked windows.

What the Mother wanted to show us might be different from what we wanted to see.

“My grandma drinks that,” the kid ahead of me at Duane Reade snarks at my six-pack of Ensure bottles.

It does not make any noise but it works.

Blisters is a game where you sit on the floor on either side of a candle and hold little fingers like a pinky swear above the flame until someone lets go.