The next day, I woke first and made French toast. I had a teenaged hangover, buzzing and giddy.

The story of religious mania and the story of political violence look very likely to converge on each other.  Having consciously elected the first, Lucas keeps being drawn, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unwittingly, toward the other. Both feature his new inamorata, Sonia Barnes.

Power Lines

Spring was coming to its sap-sticky end when
you were telling me something about how they carve out
tree branches to make room for power lines.

You were moving out of your house

I count the number of murderers in the class.

There was something that she wished to start, and when she started it, she figured, her life would take on new meaning. But in this moment in time, she ate breakfast bars all hours of the day and worried about money.

swang

at night i sleep next to you, your skin balmy course. like grinded down sweetgum made smooth in the sweat of the mississippi delta summer. you tear and bend at my will. your spine disjoints

There is a universe of existence we have no words for, and maybe that is why we sequester ourselves in naturally quarantined cities: fear of the unknown and unintelligible.

Nick your shin shaving, stare idly at the blood coursing down your foot and down the drain, and maybe this is how you do it, empty out all your insides until your shapeless skin is all that’s left.

I wanted to be “that girl,” but my new high-waisted pants from the Marais were already unbuttoned once.

EMOTION CASINO

welcome to your life 
your face changes as you watch
outside the frame
among the distractions
you are right now
a body prone to emotion 
Google Maps 
attraction 
you never

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.”