My First Real Sneakers
Christian Aguiar
There was no way you could have a pair of Nikes and get clowned.
Recently, I told my mother that I used to climb out of the bathroom window in the upstairs and crawl out onto the chimney ledge, where one slip of the ankle, knee, wrist, and I would have fallen three stories onto cement. Perhaps it began as another peace offering—I was trying to amuse her.
There was no way you could have a pair of Nikes and get clowned.
There was a yearning in me for her soft whiteness, which went powdery pink in her most private of places.
I want to be remembered like this: taut...
Under what circumstances do we find ourselves here?
Previously on...
Part 2 || Part 1 || Prologue
"with sky as ceiling, / ground as home, / we can call the stranger / lover / and the earth / ours / at least for a little while."
salat to define the terms of ritual
[adhan]
A calling, a culling, a billowing
minaret banner, a cigarette starter thrown
out a moving car window to prove a point.
I dreamed we were in a department store trying to buy you shoes.
This was months ago. April, maybe May. The weather was foggy. So was my brain. I saw you again in the Cubism section. I was standing in front of “The Actor” by Picasso. The second I saw you, I smiled
Take a percocet at around 4:30pm.
Eat a large weed cookie, drink 1 750ml can of beer and then 3 pints between 6:30pm and 10:00pm.
"You won’t let me love you, so I am loving this plant,” he says.
People used to tell my father they looked alike, he and Bruce, and I suppose it was true.
Betty's son Jonah is convulsing in the kitchen and there are fifty ways he could die.
My Brother’s Two Screams
I heard two screams from my bedroom. Outside,
my brother had killed his best friend. That day
the clouds stayed put. The trees swayed under
gentle winds, but not
NAME LIKE A GIRL
I am a girl named older. I get in the way
of my own sleeping. Not being average
like that house, full of triangular
objects, where I only know two
animals, a fish and a
I tried to write a warning
in chaste trees and pumpkin vines:
the worst men of our lives will return
to us in more ways than one.
Preordained,
You preheat your oven to 425°F before measuring out two and one third cups of self-rising flour into a glass Pyrex bowl. White Lily is the best though it can be hard to find outside of the south and is worth tracking down. It’s milled from a soft winter wheat, and with it your biscuits puff up into soft, light pillows that literally melt in your mouth.