She could eat. She could get a little plump, not so plump that he wouldn’t like it, but plumper than before she knew him, when she had to stay thin and dainty so she could get married and become plump, though no more than he liked.

Tracey, what am I meant to do with all this shit?

Party snacks
platters of them
orange and puffed up
Moloko rasping from a corner

          there’s an awareness of space, of bug spray

You know what’s sad? When no one releases your sex tape.

And then there is the question of motherhood. And how it does or doesn’t fit into the feminist narrative, into our ideas of ourselves as liberated women.

Girls with blue hands

I
Psychopathology
in the woods
Naked snow
Cold, bare thighs
keep the snow white.
Tie around a tree
Hide your ruby
ring in the dirt
Rub your hair
against the

If we accept the conventional ATF line, bootleggers are scoundrels of the worst sort, caring only for the almighty dollar, men who will poison you with hootch run through junk radiators and contaminated with everything from antifreeze to dead rats.

Find your mark. As American as they come. Like this couple, standing a few feet to your left. Around your age, but taller, sturdier, sun-fed and muscular. Their smiles remind you of neatly racked milk bottles.  

Why Everything Is Everything

          for my daughter

Because earth is spinning
     and spinning and circles
a yellow star. Because
     gases burning, flaring
above the poles we spin
   

Dear Jane,

The TikTok girls are mad at you.

BIG TIME

okay i’ll be doing my best to     explain myself, to     say i did the best i could with what i
had and you     did the same      my mom will be bringing home ice cream soon
     she

It was during the seventh experiment that I died, or I think I died—I mean, I must have died because if I hadn’t there surely would have been a lawsuit of some sort, and I’d know about it by now if I hadn’t died. Maybe I’d be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to keep signing up for these research studies and tests just to pay my bills. And to buy my pills.

The man who used to be my husband wanted to hook up.  “Right here,” he said after parking our Nissan Sable in the road we used to live on and killing the headlights

Holistic Medicine

Hungover, I google How To: Self-Care.
A recipe for kale juice guarantees
wholesomeness. I buy a juicer, stain
the counter with spilt optimism.

Attend laughter yoga, trick

I stared at the other campers, who stared into the center, screaming through their disbelief at what they were screaming.

So I wanted to bang this exvangelical guy and it's about to get worse:

After last night, I’m no longer allowed at The Mint Bar. You could say it’s because I choked the owner’s daughter up against the wall next to the jukebox that only plays Cash songs—pushed her hard enough that a quarter fell from the coin slot—or you could say she deserved it.

Is it weird to call Dave Housley the “Uncle” of lit mags? He’s that guy, the writer/editor/generally amazing human that everyone in the literary world seems to know. Dave is one of the original

We are a thousand couples. A million maybe.

A Perfect Pitch

Throwing under-handed
his fastball started curving
over home plate
so I swung at the pitch
and bought the bat for my son
which was too heavy for him
in his first little league

I’m in accounting. Sally in the lab. Among her other duties, Sally is an odor judge. Her nose is rather ordinary to look at, what my grandma might have called a button nose. But Sally’s nose is legend.

The man wearing a Ray Lewis jersey doesn’t know who Ray Lewis is.

Dream Vision of Frank O’Hara

    it is 4:40 and I’m drenched in moonstone, sequins, fishnets, and general getting-out
    of-bedness at the corner of 11th Avenue and 30th hoping for something

We beat Brock Shamos every day. We beat him with jump ropes we stole from Mr. Randall’s P.E. class

KISS ME THRU THE PHONE

trembling     string between two cans
     across town     fry-gravel longing compressed      voice-tightrope
transposed, delivered to you     I don't know how it happens-

FOMO

It’s hard to look back
when your neck is pressed
against a wall of ignorance and bliss

I don’t know my history
‘cause I didn’t see it happen

I guess it was
during the bathroom

We are always looking for something to cure us of the pain of being made of fallible meat.