reasons why my father sent me a picture of a dead coyote
to start a conversation
to assuage my worries
to prove he knows my brand
to remind me of my mortality
to remind me of his
to
Asynchronous
Or,
Damn You, Tinder
In Which
A Mobile Dating App Provides Reminding that
We Are All of Us the Playthings of Chance
Waiting in line at the DMV that squats at the center of
“God is good!” my uncle Albert chanted, and his congregation agreed in full force.
YES! AMEN! YES GOD, AMEN!
“God is willing to heal you of all that hurts you, my children. All he asks for is
The more time spent at the sunglasses booth, the more willing you are to endure pain and suffering just to feel human again.
And it was at that moment—seeing that light and realizing that other people were together in the world in that very same light while he was in an alley watching himself on TV—that he finally felt something: an overwhelming, honest and simple sense of sadness that felt like a beautiful release.
At eighteen I got two stars tattooed on my ankle. I used to tell people a variety of stories: they were falling stars, they were the stars from Peter Pan, they were the North Star and its unnamed
What I've written here is, of course, something that Kurt Cobain will never know. On April 8, the discovery of his suicide was 24 years ago in history. That's almost a quarter of a century, and I
This wasn’t supposed to be an essay.
I became obsessed with the idea of bunting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted to make my own.
10,000 years from now
two men will be
digging
in the ground
and they’ll find
a frisbee
buried deep below the surface.
one man will look it over,
puzzled,
and turn to the other man
and
"I’m always looking for ways to pay more attention. I thought maybe I could be a better writer if I knew what private investigators knew, if I could see a clue for what it was. I’m still learning."
to gain followers I use my body then / I lose them with my poems
After I turned thirty-five, the age of forty circled me like a shark. My dread of it intensified with each passing year. On my thirty-eighth birthday, I braced myself. The movement in the water had
The machine sleeps in the corner. Its dreams are projected onto large white walls where we watch them and record our reactions.
while i / in half-lotus / pluck stubble from / my belly
“Get in here!” yelled Grandma. “Carrot Head is gonna sing!”
Daisy was going to community college classes out on SE 82nd and trying to figure out what direction her life should take. Her classes were Dental Hygiene, Religious Studies, and Ethics in Improv Comedy.
It’s the sun, I told myself again. Too much sun makes people too hyper, too happy, too sure of themselves. What we need is a little rain, some dark clouds, a berating storm.
Rain drags its cage / through the neighborhood. You / see nothing but // trenches. Rusty shovels, / the alien rocks sprayed / like genitals.
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.
