caught in self-asylum / let it rile ‘em

1. Teller

as a teller i tell people things

like no

but mostly yes

and

can you wait a minute i need to ask my manager

and i smile and give dogs treats

i didn’t

according to my mother, men
are just thieves rifling through another’s calm...

oh raised-hand Matt. you
centrist bastard, your mouth kool-aid-stained
with stubble, it gushed and fucking gushed.

You can never return to the track. A hard truth, heaven knows, but heed me— delay the wreck
and coma. Take a longer backwards way and savor that last downhill run, the final door to close.

...she told me she had lived in Singapore
too long to call it home anymore. She hated her name so together we made
her a new one, & like this she finally belonged to herself.

Remember when Lena Dunham said

She wished she’d had an abortion?

On the other side of the apocalypse, you will become something unimagined,
you will dissolve and finally become the wind—then, you will be enough

i ask if i could be june
my birth month he says all days any days
for a smile like mine

Fuck an infographic — where’s the paper?
Operation: Get Paper to hand out paper,
‘cause all my people needed was their papers.

The Day I Drove to Dubuque (an Hour and Fifteen Minutes One-Way) to Find Out I Had $1.09 Left on a Books-A-Million Gift Card

poetry in real life is January in Iowa,
watching from my

After My Husband’s Hernia Surgery

His belly is rounded like
he’s just beginning to show

as if the healing
is its own being inside him.

I tie his shoes, kneel down
to find the

i impart resonance on the amber zen
in a manifestation of waterford
and drink down the vacuity      to expedite
enlightenment:
a numb tongue and thawing cheek     and the ringing     reaching

Twitter Prophecies

are sour wine.
You say don’t stop pap
smears after age 65.
Cervical cancer can
still happen at ninety.
I say paper boats
still sail the river Styx
home. The sky
is a

On Penguins in Brooklyn

the protagonist feels like
she’s never leaving,
stuck on a moving walkway
in the middle of cincinnati
international airport
in kentucky,
headphones dangling,
she

Equivalence

How heartbreaking to find irises tilting
to full bloom in one direction
as if waiting for someone to come
down their path are one symptom
of light’s partiality. A heart

montreal

baked brick, dark bread,
breath sinking into a hot, grey bath when
caught in smoke between compartments
on the metro. pink lights from
the townhouse on rue de rushbrooke
blinking away

September Dream

An eternity, for the Asphodel, is a brief few
months. It’s been a decade, as the crow flies,

ten days on Venus, ten Venus days,
each, longer than a year.

When I’m without

I WANT TO THANK YOU

for unbottling my aged Mandarin with each 晚安 / for cooking me these sardines / strewn on a
beach of rice, their eyes still intact / I want to thank you / for carrying that

I’ll Always Make Love to the Mississippi.

We bruised
my knees on the bluff.

I’ve disappeared into the current
of loving nothing
but tainted water lapping against rotten fish
against a rocky

Stuffed cracks in ground with paper towels

I used to chew on blocks of wood
crying that the dentist has gone away from town.
*
My mouth would open wide
for sparkling birds and insects to enter

“Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp Make Out, Eat Fried Chicken”

They are busy galocher-ing on 2nd Avenue
I am on the sidewalk looking at the sky

They are stopping to wipe their mouths
it

i'm in love with the thousand yard stare
deeply towards the worn fold
of the catcher's glove

I pause from scraping frost
off the car, and watch my gray
emissions wisp away

into the chill. I miss strict
seasons, and knowing
what to wear. Last week, it was 72.

When will summer

A Hopeful Young Man on a Job Interview

I’m broke and eating chocolate ice cream out of a novelty helmet
I’m sweating because I’m wearing a sweater in the heat
to cover up the insane poison ivy on