Portrait, with Negative Space

Running faucet, orange light hollow as a pill bottle,
images submerged in a bath of chemicals, blooming
into black-&-white being. That was the only

I am reading a poem called “George Washington” in a book of poems called George Washington in a bar called The Library in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where I am spending my last twelve dollars on four beers and my last four dollars on tipping the bartender because happy hour still hasn't started.

Okay, so there’s that sound again, and you know it isn’t Tommy or Lindsey trying to scare you, because they’ve been asleep for over an hour and you’re certain the sound is coming from the basement

My friend takes caffeine pills between classes and shakes in the bathroom, on the floor under the sinks.

I kissed Jesus up the neck until his hearing aid caught my gums like a chicken bone.

Tiny Evolutions

okay so let’s talk
about the exes we mythologize
for the wrong reasons   like leave
a toothbrush at my bathroom sink
and call it love   and baby
I’ll promise ring your

MONUMENT

YOU SPECIFY IN YOUR LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT “BURY ME WHERE I STAND” SO THEY REMOVE A CHUNK OF TILES FROM THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF THE GOLDEN PANTRY’S CHECKOUT COUNTER AND THEY SET YOUR

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time playing Candy Crush Saga on the old iPhone Jan gave me while watching TV.

Poland = Michigan

Class Aves

Anyone that ever heard the call
of the Rodrigues Solitaire

is long dead, but its name is trapped in stars:
turdus solitarius—
named by a sensitive astronomer.

Does this

Nell did not consider herself a thief. All sixteen lovely pups were better off in her care. She kept them in a large house with a sprawling yard, surrounded by a sturdy fence.

The items on the list had come to her at random as she washed a dish or plucked a hair from her chin or put gas in the car.

On Miracles

Jesus trained a dolphin to swim up under him and lift him over the waves.

Jesus wanted to show everyone his trick.

It looked like he was walking on top of the

piss you one cleaner than your trackshoes, say i / sex toys on lease to i / houses for my centipede, ow / coke that asshole into skinny fleece / clean up with her spate, guy / suck stray dogs in the cock wound, i / lick what your god's got, why / imma mafuckun star boi

Asian Pen Name*

Mine is Kien,
which is useful
in cases
where I need
to prove
I am who I say
I am,
like the time
a cop pulled me
over and said
Sir, do you know
why you

Within its pages, the reader is invited to discover those wondrous things that only great short fiction can offer: an abbreviated window into disparate lives, intense and intricate moments of distress and disclosure, completely self-contained and executed in twenty-five pages or less (Deagler on Gustine's Collection).

Dear Katie

The movie we watched the night you told me you were leaving your husband for a girl with skin rough as a butcher’s block no storm could ever smooth clean. When sharks were falling from

Even his sacred biosphere (of anime, video games, Oedipal and teen porn, poststructuralist psychobabble, and grad school fellowships) can’t save him from the critical intervention of the collapsing world.

He removed a wad of fabric from under the bed, pulling on boxers and an Anthrax t-shirt. I winced at the Anthrax logo—I knew better than to fuck guys into thrash metal—too late now.

Being There

Describing my body is easy
because I do not know what it looks like.

From above, I imagine my face
when it experiences a thrill.

There could be more to what I’m looking

I wondered what my mother would say about the gun, and then I wondered it out loud. M gave me a look I was too worn out to interpret.

Red Teeth

Left work early to meet delivery peeps at my building. 100 weeks ago we ordered a couch. Tell ya, I've never seen two guys more pissed off to have to deliver a couch. It was like they

But if it's anything like years passed it'll boil down to something real simple. Start drinking as soon as the coffee is done. Bottles of beer and wine. We'll wrap ourselves up in blankets to stave off the cold. Too cheap to turn on the portable radiators we use to heat our place. Her parents will call. We'll feign sobriety. A hard thing to do at 10:00 a.m. with wine-stained lips.

I had never considered practicing polyamory, so when my girlfriend suggested it to me, I didn’t know what to say.

Outside

I keep finding myself loitering in the snow, watching strangers clink their glasses through the window's frosted glare. In my Midwest apartment I am always scrolling through photos of