The last time I saw Aunt Priscilla
Ellen Stone
She was cursing at her TV. A Red Sox game was on. She was yelling at David Price, newly acquired from the Detroit Tigers. Price was behind in the count. I wanted to tell her that David Price was a
Last year, Tim and I bought cardboard cutouts of ourselves ($129 each, apparently for charity) that watched every Athletics game in the stadium that we could not.
My husband Paul and I are drinking beers and eating hot dogs at the baseball stadium in San Francisco. It’s even a little boring, and I have my back to the field for a while so can I face my friends
In 1949 we had viewed television for three years on a 12” screen. It inhabited a large wooden box with doors that pulled out and covered the picture tube when not in use. For the most part in those
Bishop and I were smoking a joint on the pitcher’s mound. We drew dicks with our fingers next our school’s logo. It was mid-March, around midnight. I stopped drawing dicks and looked up at the empty
She was cursing at her TV. A Red Sox game was on. She was yelling at David Price, newly acquired from the Detroit Tigers. Price was behind in the count. I wanted to tell her that David Price was a
When he drops you off at home you realize the soles of your feet are covered in tar.
From the couch corner where
his ass has crafted a killer dent
for the better part of a week,
my father begins shouting insane cuss words
at no one in particular –
titty fucker bang bang, cunty
Let them do the majority of the talking. Laugh at their jokes. Ask them about their motorcycle, their new car, their recent trip to the Maldives.
An absorbed sound
There was the night where the snow was quieter than usual
& your car wouldn’t start, so we stood under concrete
steeples to wait for the tow truck until your last hand
Times the Dog Looks for God
Sun is too hot
Sun is too cold
Fire alarm
Balsamic Moon
Lightning in remembered spaces
going dormant
Shade avoidance and dashboard doubles
Feeling
By late August, Mary-Beth was sweating on her front porch swing, a bottle of Budweiser resting on the table her daughter Madison gave her for Mother’s Day a decade earlier. Mary-Beth had been watching
la tienda, or, the earth, fertile with nettles and
vegetables, bringing forth these meager
cypresses, this black damp that stains the
walls
1.
words fall off the curl of nothing
I
I have made my decision: I am going to set myself on fire.
don’t answer that
another quar poem
in the sixth month
i want to play skee ball
and put it in my mouth after.
i don’t know if my mouth
is big enough. it’s been so long.
which is bigger, the
It only took Kyle a few days to make his confession about the other woman. It took nine months for him to tell me he couldn’t ride a bike.
hints on health
you touched my skin
in the crowded afternoon
my blood like a bloom
warm and erected
our bodies are useless
in winter
my need for excess
diminishes to the pursuit
of damp
They said that Xianrenzhang took your heart because she didn’t have her own. She was looking for one that was just the right size, not too big and not too small, that she could slot into the cavern in her chest.
sadness dies badly like a waiting room plant
every body is mostly water
and will still only sink or float
it’s so maddening
it takes me two hours to finish
an apple
sometimes the human in
Confession 8: Your first semester at community college was supposed to be a fresh start.
Hector loved, loved, loved having a black friend, but he could never admit it.
crazy horse
half full heavy
whipping cream in their drywall construct
see me mob hammer ?
smack dab middle of july
i ask and clam up
that thunder is new to me
racking up the bill
instead
Britney’s People
Britney is a crystal swan born from a cave where they manufacture crystal swans. Britney’s People are her protectors. No people are as important as Britney’s People because it is
Sometimes I imagine I’ll get a long email from her, explaining why, when a family reunion stopped her from coming on the trip, she gave up on our friendship. Did I somehow offend her?
What am I doing on a train to Philadelphia?