Recently, I told my mother that I used to climb out of the bathroom window in the upstairs and crawl out onto the chimney ledge, where one slip of the ankle, knee, wrist, and I would have fallen three stories onto cement. Perhaps it began as another peace offering—I was trying to amuse her.

curly like a / shiba inu's tail...

There was no way you could have a pair of Nikes and get clowned.

By now I have learned that sometimes, as Tricia pummels away at the backs of my thighs, I can tolerate a memory or two of George.

the water's instant when still...

There was a yearning in me for her soft whiteness, which went powdery pink in her most private of places.

I want to be remembered like this: taut...

Under what circumstances do we find ourselves here?

“Yvonne?” she called out. 

"Brooklyn Roof" and "Querying"

when encountering the duckrabbit ... 

Previously on...
Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

By the time he’d arrived at the Atwell Park Summer Solstice Festival, Bill Hannan was so high he mistook one of the paper lanterns hanging from the red-lit oak tree at the center of the park for the moon. 

salat to define the terms of ritual

               [adhan]

A calling, a culling, a billowing
minaret banner, a cigarette starter thrown
out a moving car window to prove a point.

"with sky as ceiling, / ground as home, / we can call the stranger / lover / and the earth / ours / at least for a little while." 

I dreamed we were in a department store trying to buy you shoes.

This was months ago. April, maybe May. The weather was foggy. So was my brain. I saw you again in the Cubism section. I was standing in front of “The Actor” by Picasso. The second I saw you, I smiled

Take a percocet at around 4:30pm.

Eat a large weed cookie, drink 1 750ml can of beer and then 3 pints between 6:30pm and 10:00pm.

"You won’t let me love you, so I am loving this plant,” he says.

We do Christmas Eve at our mom’s.

People used to tell my father they looked alike, he and Bruce, and I suppose it was true.

Betty's son Jonah is convulsing in the kitchen and there are fifty ways he could die.

My Brother’s Two Screams 

I heard two screams from my bedroom. Outside,
my brother had killed his best friend. That day 
the clouds stayed put. The trees swayed under 
gentle winds, but not

NAME LIKE A GIRL

I am a girl named older. I get in the way
of my own sleeping. Not being average
like that house, full of triangular
objects, where I only know two
animals, a fish and a

I tried to write a warning
                            in chaste trees and pumpkin vines:
the worst men of our lives will return 
                to us in more ways than one.

Preordained,