A dispatch from 2016 and now. 

I attribute my apostasy to Michael Jackson’s HIStory

Polymers

Takes a blow-dryer
to the plastic flower.

Makes its petals
curve the way they’ll be needed

Left sucking long on the last bit
of bubble gum:
out of the lips, it drains
tarry

"Six fine fish in that dirty pond! They're gonna die there anyway!" he told me. "They're gonna suffocate on all that mud."

My trip had begun in Seattle, where the past few years had served up one setback after the next. I had been cut loose by my latest not-quite-boyfriend.

Twenty seven notes Gabriel Smith took at Bethnal Bust Up, York Hall, London, March 7th

If boxing is a sport, then it is the most tragic of all sports because more than any human activity it

She said: in my home, I want to feel at home. I want to feel as though I am swaddled in blanket, as though the walls pump food right to my gut. I water the plants, all seven or eight, some dying. I feed the cat

You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.

The First January Sun I Want to Share with You

At least a handful of sunshine,
the best ataractic; I
steady myself in the russet
downpour, attempting to trace
down this new feeling,
like a

The first time I met Courtney, she told me she loved my ballet flats. We were wearing the same $14.99 shoes. She hated her curly hair and middle name and Democrats.

Alchemy

Gathers me          with her silver gaze

     the moonlight reflects               milk

                                                                       and

Your gym is perhaps your favorite thing about Hattiesburg. Your student budget is tight, but you’ll manage to eek out thirty a month somehow—you have for the last three years.

The day before isolation, I celebrate my birthday, unwed, the first of its kind in my adult life, my divorce from a great man with whom I shared an OK eleven years, finalized by way of a $250 internet

I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.

His fullest attention. No one gets that. And here it is, steered onto me.

you’re out of touch i’m out of time

“You know what to do with that big fat butt

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle”—Jason Derulo

        EVERYDAY WE

1. Driving east on I-94 from 8:41 to 8:55 I saw brief glimpses of beauty.

Nirvana

I don’t think it was nirvana playing
I don’t know what it was
in the ocean sometimes
warm water is pulsing under the cold surface
I don’t know if I really mean it. I mean,
maybe it’s a

My favorite blurb about Amy Long's essay collection, Codependence, is Joshua Mohr saying: "Long leads her readers into emotional investigations and she has the courage to never flinch." To do what

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, turning to the man in the seat beside me. Though he didn’t appear to speak English, he intuited my rejection. Loneliness, like love, is an international language.

Maybe you can do this. It’s not your idea. But maybe.

I’d learned from Rock of Love that a diabetic’s rollercoaster blood sugar is a constant interruptor at best.

Previously on...
Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

The top of Yoda’s house looked like it had been splattered with molded yogurt. There was an allure to it. Like, had he intended to paint it this odd assortment of colors, he would be proud of it.

last month, every
robin I saw looked
like it wanted to fight

In her dance, Chang’e waves her sleeves to disperse the surrounding mist.