I didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d last eaten. I also knew he needed water.

“Hm,” Yoda grunted, considering the foyer, it’s openness, how exposed he was, and what he could do about it. “Hm,” he grunted again.

The last night of the trip, you stay with one of his friends in Vallecitos, New Mexico.  

When my mother built me
again, she did not wait for sobs

to pass. She left clasps undone
then wept in her bedroom.

I tried to reach for the gown
but my fingers mumbled back hair

into metal

Soon sunlight would be replaced by nighttime.  I felt this, the same way my grandma could feel the rain coming on.  

What's It Like?

           We have made unspeakable mean indescribable:
           it really means nasty.
                                   -Paul Fussell

You don’t mean nasty. You mean

I don't notice anything when the television is on.  A bomb could go off in my kitchen and I wouldn't notice the wreckage until the next commercial break.

He tells them, pays for the burgers and, as they drive to the mall, as if to encourage them, a general addressing his troops, he tells them about fights with broken bottles, about fighting the black kids because he was white, the Italian and Polish kids because he was Jewish, the rich kids because he was poor.

the man who touches you also touches
the other women of the city, this special
man who you chose to be your first man
even after you’ve met so many men who
wanted to know you as a woman

When I wasn’t on the road, I ate lunch at the diner just to watch Cathy polish the cutlery. 

Maybe ‘white trash American girl’ is a compliment over there?

Like a punch. Like Margera. BAM.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is smaller than the Met and cheaper than the Met ($28 versus $40). It forms a triangle between the Barclays Center and a huge Apple

Well, at least we aren't just dead, she said.  

What?

At least we aren't dead, right?

Yeah. 

When our baby arrives I am feeling a funny mix of elation and terror – what have we done?

My mother crooned “Poetry Man” in the car between errands and have-to-be’s as in, “We have to be home by six,” or, “You have to be at piano rehearsal at three thirty.”

I will shake your hand now. Later maybe we will have drinks. 

A woman at our airport gate is eating a box of powdered donut holes and not licking her lips. She is capable of licking her lips, I know this because only after she finishes exactly three donut holes

Sometimes we’d see a slip of moon hung in velvety sky, and we’d find ourselves crying for no good reason, or maybe every reason that we could think of. 

Bullock & Allan, Garret & Twain, Star & Paisley, Swearengen & Brooks, Tolliver & Dunn

A Portrait Series Paralleling Characters in HBO’s Deadwood with Contemporaneous Pop Country Musician

I was halfway to the Drew Barrymore/Gwen Stefani hybrid image of my dreams; a few more years, I thought, and I’ll work at the Coffee Beanery at the mall.

every movie ever has big hard cocks. ass. tits. sorry, I meant porn. sometimes when I travel I listen to the radio. the songs make me think of you and I think of the shapes your mouth makes and I

One Night We Drove Through Yellowstone

I dreamt of a white bear last night,

like the ones in the rainforests

of Alaska. Landlocked, we dreamt

of whispering to them, shaking off

one

The man I love who does not love me back sends me someone else’s tweet. The only text is a hashtag: Notre Dame. The video hasn’t loaded. A week before, the Notre Dame women’s basketball team made it