Snake Day

God is strange. He killed my father,
     and He is everywhere, all of the time.

He is spread across the twinkling shingles and the clean, white siding
     of this windowless

I’m a mineralogist now,

I tell Jake, as I show him my crystals
all neatly displayed in boxes. It makes

me feel like a scientist. But I use
the crystals to cure the bad things in my

life, to

At the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, I browse the gift shop. It’s scented lavender from a leg-shaped diffuser in the corner.

I’m Writing from the Other Side of the Universe to Ask You How the Weather Is

This is a soft rain, my father says, his forehead a creased encyclopedia page. It is mao mao yu in Chinese, syllables

My last suicide attempt was in a park called Jesus Green. I said ‘last’ because I gave up, not because it worked. Writing plays tricks with life and death so you need to make things clear.

Seventeen days since you spoke your last words to me. They repeat themselves in my mind, I never want to forget them.

Song for 2 Phones

     What is that?
The line outside
the Maria Bamford standup
we went to last year.
          Send it to me.
     What is that?
A sugar maple on the hill
shedding Gatorade

I am not a pinch, a spoonful, a half a cup of light rivering down into the stomach where, I should know, the heart truly resides.

George Simmons used to sling crack on 42nd St.—why his uptown boys always called him The Midtown Turn. Now he’s 54—and everybody calls him Pop. He’s been running the streets for decades. “The streets

I didn’t turn around because I wasn’t entirely sure my name was being called and even so there was no one I wanted to talk to on the street in the middle of this particular Tuesday.

The first time I was shot I was fifteen and I deserved it. I broke into a run-down lurch, an ancient moonshiners' abandoned cabin in the forest.

Traffic

It’s 60 degrees in January so the birds have decided to just stick it out because who can afford the time-share anyway and the flowers bloom completely off-key like the conductor is drunk

It had been a long frustrating day, but at least he was now bathing in a bowl of milk.

And yet, and yet, from the rear pew of my mind came a rude slurping as my straw probed the ice of a Pepsi.

We get back together, because of course we do. He is better, now. Therapy helps both of us.

Dan texted his wife before going on the ventilator. She shares most things on Facebook, and she has disclosed this last message, too.

Consideration of Deferred Action for Chilhood Arrivals

This is when your humanity ends, when a pen hits this paper.

...I'm part of this thing where fish learned to walk...

This spring was cloudy + wet so the world is green, green, green. 

Tom Selleck, in his best reverse mortgage voice, volunteers to call your parents and break the news that their daughter almost died. Your mom is happy to hear from him since she always liked Magnum P.I.

"lucky" and "trophy"

Big Bob sat beside me and watched women he classified as MILFs walk their kids to the pool with large, clear tubes.

AR: This is a boundary and you are going to push against it

She arrived at my apartment at 3 a.m. with a soft suitcase on her head, a handle positioned over one eye. I could see the netting in her matted blonde wig. Her broken eyeliner and stained lips

After we finish doing the dinner dishes together, Mario heads into the living room and picks up the remote control.

“Guess what?” he says, turning on the TV. “New Zealand is playing England in

become translucent as they die...