I was aware, somehow, that people tended to get intense feelings about the bands they loved and that music had Mystery, capital M. But my family was not intense. We were American cheese on Wonder Bread.

I often confuse the dead horses
for trees. I say things like termites

care about the weather, or dark stars
will always find their way to empty

rooms. Anyway, the dead horses are real,        

About earlier, he had started to say —

— is that all you can think about, your duck?

We’re in line for beer and a guy in a Yankees hat turns to Tim, looks him up and down in his BoSoxery, and asks if he can buy his beers for half-price on our badge.
“Only if you say the Yankees suck,” Tim says.

What I do know: Janet Wellington made eye contact with me in the YMCA pool. I also never had a chance to look my mother in the eye and say goodbye. 

Carrot Flowers

We are toward somewhere in the first sentence. There is June & us or us or June because that’s what’s left of it. I walk like a walk with a walk on the table. The walk is finding

On a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon when I didn’t want to walk outside: a box proclaiming to be synthetic urine for sale in Nirvana, next to Louie’s Tux Shop and across from C.J. Banks in the Muncie Mall, behind the counter where they sell glass pipes blown to resemble tiny carrots and octopi, next to a rack of Rasta wigs.

Neck Tattoo

Your neck tattoo spoke to me but I needed a
translator. Needed a nail gun, a barn wall to
respond to  your forward  advances.  After a
night together,  I woke to find  that your

I turn 30 next month but I’m no longer afraid because I read somewhere that time is an illusion. I am purchasing an anti-aging moisturizer, just in case. It’s expensive, but money is no object. I’m worth four figures.

I was looking forward to ruining my chances of being able to run or march anywhere. 

More than most players, examining Guerrero's life feels like voyeurism, or like wandering hospital corridors with your head on a swivel. When he was good, he was, as James suggested, astonishingly good... But his bad times were difficult to watch, and lacked the privacy that we'd all hope would greet our worst moments.

real / unreal

last night i had a dream         
            that my teeth fell
out all in a row.
                       i woke with them still
                                                 

Vapor of Breath

All hail Michigan Dogman. All
slobber and standing seven feet
tall, Michigan Dogman sounds

howls like he’s missing a muffler
yet we’re never quite sure if it was
him or the

When I was a freshman in college (many years ago, before the marriage and the children and the divorce and the loss of faith in God), I saw a man order eight McDoubles at a McDonald’s on campus and then proceed to eat them all.

I’m meeting a friend for drinks and a Friday night concert; work is days, a train ride and a major city away. 

the babies are most dangerous because
            they have not learned how to control their venom
                        the way we make the same decisions over and over and over

I’ve been tasked with digitizing my father’s slides, a hundred or so he inherited from his aunt.

While they wrote about the never-ending snowstorm in the first pages of their novel: outside of their apartment, snow began to fall.

~

It was four days into the snow, into writing their novel,

i am your man

tall stranger man
you have sung a lot of songs 
you fall in love often
and maybe
you lose some things along the way
but everything is all right
and none of this matters

I was going to see Verdi’s Falstaff with Robin.  My driver said “I hate Bill de Blasio. The MTA is corrupt. Uber is corrupt. I’ve been driving taxi since 1993. I know New York, you said Lincoln Center

I watched Jim Johnson try to close out the 9thin front of a half-capacity Camden Yards. My father was supposed to come, but he was six blocks up at Mercy Hospital relearning to use the left side of

And yet, when it came to hitting a baseball, I always liked my odds.

The solidity of contact is registered first in the hands. The knowledge radiates outward from there. 

I have torn up the boy whose baseball
You are signing again.
He was beautiful,
As you are, Brooks Robinson,
As you lean your name back, a lefty’s autograph,
Your glove hand, the one that

“You can’t pee here,” Brendan tells me as I climb inside the doorway leading into the belly of the Green Monster. What he means is that you shouldn’t pee here. Manny Ramirez did once, during the