Poet, activist, and educator Anthony Thomas Lombardi absolutely slays the page in his debut collection murmurations from YesYes books. It is a collection steeped in survival and song—with the iconic Amy Winehouse at its center, the patron saint of the collection, Lombardi revels in variations of doomed beauty, over and over, until there is nothing left but sacred stain.
What’s the difference between a dead hooker and a Corvette?
One of the men I’ve dated has a wooden cross erected in his front yard, and another guy drives a minivan.
The first shall be last and the last shall be first, Frank said / that’s from episode 42 /
of the telly series Kung Fu, / ‘This Valley Has Terror’
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What violence is there in giving someone a name, carving out Ida's real name
of these fourteen strips, lacing up the endless observations each day
in the deformed images of words that tell
I feel too sorry, I’m too tired, and though I desperately want to change my life, I’m not in a position to, which is to say I’ve taken up the position of defending my nondefendable position. Position underneath position.
Pinging sounds. Low electric drone.
Sex is the opposite of being a novelist, and I would rather live between them.
“We come here once a month,” the woman added. “To spice things up.”
The air felt so heavy that it would suffocate all language.
‘Eaten.’ He rectifies, his tongue flips out and recoils in saurian swiftness.
Fully, religiously, rigorously outline, and enjoy the surprises along the way.
Pull your elastic around your wrist / and laugh like a grown woman.
I don’t want anything serious. But come to raves with me. Take drugs with me!
And by:
Elizabeth Ellen’s Instagram account (@shortflightlongdrive). Come for the cougar stalking the line between avant-tasteful and not not ironic literary hot mom, stay for zooming in on the books in the background. Elizabeth Ellen’s Instagram. I’m liking it for the captions.
But there’s no cup, no / kitchen. Just one mouldy / statue, dreaming of television.
out in the Everglades, no resurrection
just a rotting boy's corpse
the day i was born i was yellow and poisoned and anxious.
and they put me under a sunlamp and burned it out of me.
I laugh and say, “is that a Rupi Kaur poem?”
You’ll know you’re entering pound-town, U.S.A. if you start to lie a lot
a friend of mine once said that [Fresh, Green Life] is My Year of Rest and Relaxation for boys.
Drug Plane
I was fifteen, then sixteen, then twenty. My high-school friend was my now college roommate. His stepfather was less mysterious but more compelling. He was having trouble with his
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