Ironically, hours before we went to see Whoopi, I texted two friends from my bathtub that I didn’t think I would ever write another essay. It was “too hard.” “People only want to vilify you, so they look for words to use to that end, and ignore the rest of what you’ve said.”

For weeks after, I watched California burn / out my window & on the evening news & the ash // in my cheeks became the only way/ to pronounce home.

Jack Daniel screams his way down my throat & it’s a dry thrust.

McGuiness in bed with chow mien. Eyeballs floating in melatonin.

“Watch your back,” moans ceiling fan. TV glow damaging optic nerves, retina, etc.

Trapdoor in Benzedrine bottle on floor. Deep in

My dog keeps biting me when he’s scared / and, like anyone, is always scared.

Now I’m not dating anymore and I use the gold duffel bag to haul my belongings from one house-sitting gig to the next.

When, on August 18, 2015, the dog the internet called “The Devil” was finally cornered by the Salt Springs police department several of its victims, those sufficiently recovered from their wounds,

Every writer knows the rule of ‘write what you know,’ but the interesting thing is that you don’t really know what you know until you write it.

When I was little, my best friend Tamara and I stole. She was a year older than I was, treated me like a little sister, and taught me all the ropes. We wore sweaters on hot summer days, dresses too big for us, huge pants with pockets. 

With the bobby pin I’ve kept beneath my tongue all morning, / my fingers spring the lock to my parent’s bedroom // where mom’s cherry lipstick glows beneath a seashell lamp. 

You joined in, and told Danielle that she should only serve us drinks in diamond pimp glasses.

I based the Australian on a man I met in a coffee shop when I was 19. We went back to his place and did coke together, and he told me all about himself...

WEED MILEY. Come back to us Weed Miley. I plonk down on the water sofa. Weed Miley screams into the mirror. She had invited me to join them. Weed Miley talks here, I then talk. Weed Miley enters wearing a cloth nightgown.

New Jersey as land of claws & fangs & deep fields of grass that stumble onto the side of the highway // New Jersey as fields of soft dirty ice // New Jersey as blondhairblueeyes slapping you in the face at lunch in the cafeteria in front of all your friends

At first, it seemed like a poet’s dream day job. A job of watching, then describing.

The cartels were losing the battle. Everywhere they dug they met a new obstacle. There was freshly poured concrete down their northwest tunnel. They discovered recently installed top of the line micro security cameras. They came face to face with growling German shepherds. 

I’ve mooned away my marriage, / grounded it, ripped the fuselage / in two, or is the better metaphor
to say I heard the countdown go / from ten to zero and didn’t even / try to stop my wife from breaking / the gravity of disaster planet me?

On that rainy morning of that last day, I delivered some homemade ajiaco, Colombian chicken soup, to my mother, and my ex-girlfriend who was expecting a child that might be her husband’s or mine.

The Club pursues a shaky business proposition, and Jax must decide where his allegiances lie.

Allegiances are tested as a business deal heads south, and Jax must choose between the Club

The night I saw you on TV, I thought of the toads.

The ones we carried onto the roof of your house with a slingshot that afternoon when no one was home.

Some songs sound best under the sun. Some are night-blooming. These you hear clear in dark-dark; maybe there are stars.

“I Go To Sleep (demo),” The Kinks

Play this first, especially if

Field Notes in Haiku

I hear a giant
lives in a stardew valley
I follow the signs:

a knot of sparrows
outlines the shape of a nose—
cold autumn rainfall

the field of yarrow
turned

The day we met, you told me Los Angeles was home but that you were born in Houston. It was the insurance company’s orientation day for new employees, and you were standing alone at the far table, looking around with hesitation, like a child on the first day of school.

“Bit ‘im in the jugular,” the truck driver tells me about the bear ten feet away, describing the day the bear went crazy.