Coolness is an anchor, a fortress, a cold and remote puritanism.

1.

Remember when you would sit on the floor of my lavender painted room when I was 15 and you were 21? You’d twirl a dreadlock around your finger looking up at the wall of Teen People Magazine

Once upon a time, long before she was on Good Morning America, I met the kindest writer on Twitter. Not only was she a relatable mother-writer, but she also understood Scrivener. This was absolutely

In the low light of dawn, I master—
I conquered
my body and led it / as a slave.

The other day she showed up at André’s apartment in the middle of the night with a red rose and, in the bottom of her purse, a steak knife...

Each day it paints the clearest possible picture of the gulch you’ve driven your life into.

a monstera I brought as a housewarming gift; bookcases betraying a brilliant, associative mind—the LOTR trilogy, a chess board, tomes on capitalism and ecology, The Power Broker, an anthology of gay poetry, more Caro books on LBJ, a poetry book I’d gifted atop the dusty shelves

It’s 2018 and my husband and I are on the couch, watching what will end up being the longest World Series game in history— 18 innings, seven hours and twenty minutes. The Los Angeles Dodgers are

I’m thinking of your fallow tongue,
the taste of what you did and didn’t say.

"Style, jokes, slapstick, serious ideas, and shit-talk"
A Flash Book Review of "The Apology" and Brief Interview with Christian TeBordo

When you work in an office (or maybe any job, but in my

Southward

You are the big blue sky
I never thought you would have
The moment when you turn your head over
So the water freezes
So the ginkgo falls
So the wall full of photos is also pale
And

Maybe it won’t work for you. Maybe you are too smart, or too cemented in your physicality. Or you’ve run your brain through more powerful substances than I have. But if you want to try to leave your

Often when I got poor grades as a child, and I often did, I would be told that if I wanted to be the CEO of Playboy I had to do better in school.

just looked outside
to see what’s going on
whatever         it

is thursday
precious, beautiful
whatever as ever

and i can’t
pry my hand
off the windowsill

i’m driving the future
it’s a

Waxing Phase

Sparrow day
draining to red

red wall of night
night a voice

caught within the throat
the throat a tunnel

a blackened river
a wing bending

a moonrise

Night

You had one of those
shag haircuts that all lesbians
in Brooklyn have we sipped
your favorite pink drink

From champagne flutes as the
sun bled crimson and the air
crisped between us you’ve

You’ve heard of Leigh Chadwick, of course. She’s a force of nature, a clear, true Twitter voice, even your favorite poet, perhaps? She’s a writer whose poetry combines form and imagery in unique,

We rely upon these narratives, asking them to explain away uncertainties about why we are the way we are, about how we have come to be in the world just like this. We ask them to prove to us that we have been here at all.

He sits alone on the beach with his feet in the sand, cigarette in mouth, eyes on the water, though there’s no one out here who knows him, and it’s not clear what he wants, unless what he wants is to be alone, in which case he picked the wrong part of the strand.

I worried I had magically bloated between 9 a.m. and lunch time, even though I’d only eaten the prescribed six saltine crackers.

The weather is hot.  The air conditioning is broken.  Everyone’s body is aching.  “You’re old enough to know.”  Our parents, he says, agree: it is time for us to understand openings, to recognize that we are not pinatas.  We are not stuffed with sugary candies in tight plastic wrappers.  Streamers and noisemakers will not burst forth from our chests.  We should not go at one another with baseball bats.  Openings are not occasions for blindfolds.

Hiring Bodyman

This city hates me

I get so tired
of waiting

for you
I groom myself

Now all I have to do
is show up at your door

& you’ll call me sweetheart
forever

I hate

A river coursing with so much life it broke through the surface. I liked that.

S and I were together nearly a year before the band really got back on the road. Their six-week tour started in Minneapolis.

that was the year that all the carnivals came to town. sounds like a fake small town thing, but when you live in a small town, all the things that happen are fake small town things, except they’re

The summer I was allergic to tap water was the summer I lost all my friends. School was out but nobody wanted to be around me except for Joel who wasn’t really my friend to begin with but sort of became one afterwards. It was understandable. I couldn’t shower and, well, to be perfectly honest, I smelled bad. Joel didn’t seem to mind, though. He worked the check-out at the general store and taped his ear to his head.