They

whoever they are they warn freak snowstorms
in spring & weak apple harvests & everyone mutters
certain doom in small talk & watches the news cycle
for the deaths of their

In these poems I am using ‘Chelsea Martin’ as a pseudonym for someone who is not Chelsea Martin.

I've been socialized to be alive / the quiet death of women eating salad

We talked about a lot of things when we were high. We talked about a lot of things when we were sober, too. 

i have stopped worrying / about being / a robot / version of me / with unfamiliar eyes / but i have other worries

Dad’s side are all boring fucks. Mom’s side, god—all my mom’s brothers thought they were the outlaw rebel cowboys of New Jersey. Wild ones. Alcoholics. They were fun, while they lasted. All those men

We lie here together, gold in charred hands, / pulling the ash from each other’s hair.

As always, feel I’ve mentioned this elsewhere—But here’s how deep I’d get into something without being able to have it make sense. 

This is the most difficult sermon, / The one where the disciples / Burn the hamburger buns and / Christ nearly misses his train.

I grow our loneliness in my mouth, feed you— / sweet and bleak— under a halo of buzzing stars.

It was late July, those days in Chicago when summer is past its prime and everybody's waiting around for a bit of fun.

The snow is beautiful and I want to die. Who could / refuse this softness?

Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Malkmus
February 13th, 2001
Matador Records
12 songs, 42 Minutes

I ripped this CD onto my half-dead laptop in the dingy radio station studio deep in the

They had taken all the milking cows but left us the wheat fields that fed them. Only Boy handles our cow creamer with two hands, respectfully, as we consider it a new-religion relic. He is too

The photo I'm about to share is a sandwich, on a big brioche bun, cheese dripping out the sides, and juicy roast beef, beet red and bloody, two inches thick. I stick in two toothpicks, with blue

Than the plastic donation kiosks in a mall / shaped like a funnel. You walk up and roll / your change and watch all of it spiral down

Weird day at work. Serving at Maria’s, couple walked up to me, looked like they’d been crying, gave me one hundred dollars. Five twenties. 

My son is obsessed with points.

An interview with Anna Noyes

We were clowns playing death metal. That was our gimmick: whiteface makeup, red rubber ball noses, rainbow-colored wigs. We called ourselves Puke Bucket, but in his review of our first big gig

Do you ever make pieces of origami, folding a sheet of paper over and over intentionally? Do you feel silly? Do you question each fold, or trust that the folds will add up to the frog or the bird you were promised?

Due to a clerical error, 265 students registered for my English 101 course. 

I am all the way turned on; turned up. Nerve-hiss-skin. There is a story here, and I am running interference.

It isn't natural / for a thin stem with fruits / to sprout up – / they're heavy, / they're supposed to just hang.

First, he ARRIVED – like the swans at Capistrano, or aliens in the desert, or, more likely, a flaming dessert.

“Who is that?” my friend Noelle said, poking me in the ribs; her inflection, a

You don't know it yet, but I gave you bad directions, and now I can't find you. For this, I am truly, truly sorry.