this poem starts on a tuesday in Kansas
a twister settles in. there is a twister dancing
in the night like a blight on the sky’s eye &
the people are afraid. someone yells: there is a
My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—
My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.
Goats and cows’ dreams have little pull yet. Cheese
is still cheese, piston driven milkers likely painful. The future
of sirloin strips it of skin, legs, bones, grown without
the cortex of
{All I Wanted Was Everything}
You say you know the reason why Archimedes
Her head is hung in anguish. She has opened the window. She is telling Satan to leave our house. She is upset with us.
I am no longer youthful, but not quite middle aged either. Traces of a younger me are present, though fading.
Read Kevin Mahler's Introduction to his ongoing 6-part "Portrait Series Paralleling Characters in HBO’s Deadwood with Contemporaneous Pop Country Musicians," and check out previous parts 1 and 2 and
When I was thirty I found my birth mom. I’d written her letters but never sent them.
This is a frontier town. Means it’s small.
Now, if the frontier was moving forward, like they do sometimes, our town might get bigger, but that ain’t happened for nigh on eighty years and I don’t
I had no brothers or sisters, so I received a single white envelope. I took my time opening it. I watched as those around me opened theirs. One of my friends started crying. Breathing deeply, I read mine.
They gather in the basement to weep together like the boys they are.
We ate dinner with our heads down masticated silence Mom slathered hot sauce on everything including Dad’s words and the ones he didn’t say lips spraying consonants vowels dribbling down his chin i
I’ve started to clench my teeth before falling asleep.
He was super into God. He was super into church. And he was super into me
after Britney Spears
The camera pans—is this still
Mars? Oops. Gloss-
lip. Oops. Long-lashed eyes
gazing between the scraps.
Guttural purr. Oops I.
Did. It. Again. White girl
There was a Help Wanted sign at the florists. I had a car, so I walked in and applied. This was a time in my life when I’d decided anyone could do anything. In other words, I was an artist.
When I was young, I never kept a journal. Instead, my understanding of the world—and myself within in it—got wound up in 500-plus battered tapes that have followed me through life.
"Honestly, I don't care if language overtakes story."
The thing I can't wrap my head around, when it comes to the 2003 Detroit Tigers, is what it must have been like to show up to work every day. What must it have taken, as the losses mounted – up to and
Dear Naomi,
Please find enclosed some clippings from the local fishwrapper. I’ve underlined the juicy parts in blue pencil. It’s complete kleptocracy down here. You were right to leave. I can’t
Most nights I would take communion with Willis Alan Ramsey, a one trick pony like me, but I hadn’t even run yet.
My first boyfriend collected knives. He was the kind of boy who listened to Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne, who liked to draw superheroes and werewolves, and was drawn to darkness and violence with the
Amoral Impurity
Picking at ingrown
pubes on the porch swing
in the sun on the first
summery day of May
and the dogs reach up to lick
my cooch. This is not
the first time today I’ve
