TIP TOP VACATION PERFORMANCE

Two women velcroed a husky, mesh tank top
in order to separate the men from the boys.
Then, 20 aisles apart, mimed the crucifixion.
Words I’m akin to grasp start in

I confess my DIY rituals in high school, tiny fires fueled by crumpled notes and dried flowers from lost loves and later, gifts from my parents bought during the divorce. In the smoke, my hope conceived visions: sometimes revenge, always return. Nothing I witnessed was more than smoke

3/31: The day is young. Dress smart today Capricorn, big things on the horizon. When standing in front of new people, don’t forget to smile. People are drawn to you, but you forget to drop your

My mother mentioned Darren to me only once. I was in college by then.

"Today I Promise," "Rubric for Asparagus," and "My Life"

Why bother with the pretense of health or ambition, when the world was ending and there were still snacks, drinks, trysts with another unwashed neighbor?

Oort Poetica

The way ice can become a verdant spring. Horace, you know the way we stare through lenses; how we bathe the sky in radio waves. Do you understand what it means to listen to a body

Some days, Luke told me it hurt to sit down. Those days we played in the woods.

We took tarps and string from the shed to make tents between trees. We stole pennies and nickels from the house, put

Like so many gays around the world, I remember exactly where I was when Lorde dropped “Green Light”, the first song from her 2017 instant classic Melodrama. I was in my car, on my way to work. But that’s not really all of it.

Everything that could have possibly budged already had, anything neglectable was long ago done so.

The guy on the podcast had cancer, he was dying –every day he was dying a little bit more – and he was reflecting on being a literary agent.

I LOVE THAT YOU LOVE ANIMALS AND I HOPE ONE DAY TO GET AS EXCITED AS YOU DO WHEN YOU SEE A PICTURE OF A PANDA ON THE COMPUTER

the other day when you came home you were
crying because one of your

My writing professor said to me that in order to get better, you had to dismantle the person you were, because that person was killing you. I kept wondering: Why did a killer love me?

Mama was a truck. A Ford Bronco, to be exact.

A dispatch from 2016 and now. 

I attribute my apostasy to Michael Jackson’s HIStory

Polymers

Takes a blow-dryer
to the plastic flower.

Makes its petals
curve the way they’ll be needed

Left sucking long on the last bit
of bubble gum:
out of the lips, it drains
tarry

"Six fine fish in that dirty pond! They're gonna die there anyway!" he told me. "They're gonna suffocate on all that mud."

My trip had begun in Seattle, where the past few years had served up one setback after the next. I had been cut loose by my latest not-quite-boyfriend.

Twenty seven notes Gabriel Smith took at Bethnal Bust Up, York Hall, London, March 7th

If boxing is a sport, then it is the most tragic of all sports because more than any human activity it

She said: in my home, I want to feel at home. I want to feel as though I am swaddled in blanket, as though the walls pump food right to my gut. I water the plants, all seven or eight, some dying. I feed the cat

You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.

The First January Sun I Want to Share with You

At least a handful of sunshine,
the best ataractic; I
steady myself in the russet
downpour, attempting to trace
down this new feeling,
like a

The first time I met Courtney, she told me she loved my ballet flats. We were wearing the same $14.99 shoes. She hated her curly hair and middle name and Democrats.

Alchemy

Gathers me          with her silver gaze

     the moonlight reflects               milk

                                                                       and