Sometimes they say, You can’t really teach someone to write a poem, in which case you might answer, Well,
not you.

Our lovemaking is a demilitarized zone.

i don’t think there will be booze
for sale, the style writer says, 
because it’s a synagogue

in the midst of a historic crisis, i ride my bike to the river

There’s something unbearably endearing
about Pepto-Bismol in its retro European
packaging

I vomited
up a prophecy in a dive bar,
inhaling hot dogs.

Drainage stains. Snow turns to shivering rain. The rear facing concrete walls.

waylon in the kitchen
pancakes
the pain of a tattoo gun on ribs 

“you’re bad at finishing beverages that aren’t alcoholic,” you told me

writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing

You must stop dating
physicists, that sere barnacling across
the cold, leeward faces of rocks.

I ask him if the smoke was from the engine fires
or the buildings collapsing — or both
of course it was both 
We pass Emily Ratajkowski and I try to run back to get a look at her face

The other thing Belle did
Was burn three holes in my thigh
With her cigarette
Revenge for the chaos I’d caused

Mouth like the

moon. Until death,

be excited. Déjà vu

you’ve never had.

I, I, I, I, the angel speaks herself

I finger a ring of keys and wonder what doors they might unlock.

There I was on Clement Street in the morning, trying to grow another body.

It’s a sin,
to desire different architecture, I’m told

in a cellar not far from here, wine waits years to peak
before a bottle is cracked open only to empty
a bruise.

Burying me # alive 
in training pants and # rags is my son’s 
# gift of sorts

In the low light of dawn, I master—
I conquered
my body and led it / as a slave.

I’m thinking of your fallow tongue,
the taste of what you did and didn’t say.

Southward

You are the big blue sky
I never thought you would have
The moment when you turn your head over
So the water freezes
So the ginkgo falls
So the wall full of photos is also pale
And

just looked outside
to see what’s going on
whatever         it

is thursday
precious, beautiful
whatever as ever

and i can’t
pry my hand
off the windowsill

i’m driving the future
it’s a

Waxing Phase

Sparrow day
draining to red

red wall of night
night a voice

caught within the throat
the throat a tunnel

a blackened river
a wing bending

a moonrise

Night