During our first few years together, Leopard went through the washing machine after I peed on him, many times.

If Lucas is the most obvious Bob Stone avatar in Damascus Gate, Adam De Kuff might also be a contender, sharing with his author an improperly managed mental illness (it’s made very plain that De Kuff has stopped taking his prescribed bipolar meds a long while back)

Brian was psyched too. Not about her requests—Tom Waits was more his groove—but about where things seemed to be headed.

I render a coin

for something 

I forgot

the sky 

scratching itself 

into decency

when I

wake up 

always rattling 

around

in my skin

a new aesthetic 

I

“How do I know if it’s right?” I wrote. “How did you know?” “I just knew,” she texted back. 

Rhinoceros 

          I don’t recommend mistaking everything for love but it’s been interesting 
          —Alex Dimitrov

there are wild elephants
in the country
wrote Marco

I have my tee already halfway over my head, blocking my eyes, when I feel a hand on my forearm, yanking me toward the other end of the field. “You can’t do that. Put it back on.”

I ain’t supposed to know about these woods. But I did know the coyotes.

To be naked on the beach after a storm is something special—the salt and the petrichor and the hum of being unsettled that maybe the torrential rains caused damage, that maybe there were nearby ships that will never make it to harbor.

My Magic cards were the coolest thing about me.

Stone had two modes of handwriting: one a gnarly cursive he used to talk to himself and the other block capitals, more easily legible. On a scrap of torn paper in a crate of Damascus Gate research material is a draft of a self-mocking doggerel poem...

take a lemon

the world feels less and less familiar most days
sometimes it is difficult to identify where i truly am
sometimes it is a challenge not to let the ugly parts
infiltrate the joyous

Violet and I sit in her bed a while and talk. She shows me how to unhook and snake a bra through a sleeve.

I could not imagine the dark well of her grief. I wanted to pretend it had nothing to do with me. But I felt compelled to bear witness somehow.

“When Zac started writing the poems, I didn’t think it would get to this.”

so long to call back 
the first time the phone 
rang i was beneath a 
bridge when you rang 
again the roar of cars and 
cargo overhead made it too 
loud to hear you sense of 
sea partially

Two thousand nine is the centennial year of Malcolm Lowry, the British novelist and poet, whose extraordinary novel Under the Volcano appeared in 1947. Lowry’s first version of it was a loosely constructed story about Britons who witness a violent crime in Mexico.

This Year

I’m assured the last renters buried nothing but their dog back here. 

I’ve begun to accrue CVS points to diversify my portfolio. 

I can promise the doctor there’s literally no

If Clubber Lang just chilled out, he would’ve been in Rocky’s corner, too.

“Foresee this, I did not,” Yoda commiserated. But he knew what he had to do. He just didn’t know if he could do it. 

People are always saying...

Marlon, breath puffing out in the cool morning air, says to no one that if the students cry, he will cry too. This isn’t a process you want to see again through new eyes.

Here come the ones who chose / the second option...