My Left Arm

I was a fruit cake meat loaf of influences –
my name was Sloppy Joe,
I was canned pineapple slices
left out in the sun.

I called you soft names
against all reason,
on

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart.

Jennifer Loeber's pictures will remind you of your painful teenage years and

my body is an american / casket, shove the corpses / through my eyesockets til they spill / from my mouth

You’ll wake up on Labor Day and argue with the people you’re carpooling with over when to leave. 

When my children walk by, it will be like looking into the sun. Your children will have to bow their heads. My children’s eyes will be the color of electric blue icebergs.

Now here I am. The same fucking predicament all over. The universe testing to see what I'll do.

I want to walk in where I walk in & not think about me or you or anyone else we know—I want my recycling to be perfect.

She didn’t spend her senior year serving soft serve and saving for a bus ticket to Los Angeles when she turned eighteen to end up riding a tandem bike around the park with some guy whose shorts were too short.

my angst is still young / and highly flammable / something interrupted / meant to be read out of order / one chord change to another

Oh well. I threw my lover down a well. / I ran Father over. Hid Mama’s pill. / I’ve never been good at taking advice.

Hades was like the other men Evie had requested favors of; he asked Evie to explain herself before he believed that she wanted what she said she wanted.

It’s been five years, but this boy still / shines when he smiles. I stare at his jaw / as we shiver on the rooftop of this rundown / hotel, waiting for the waiter to get his beer.

No secrets fill a drowsy whale, / perfectly hollow gullet, / its song only speculation, / music its only meaning.

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart.

—Tara Wray, photo editor 

These pictures might have been

Introductions are stupid. Mostly they get in the way. Probably you have skipped ahead to read the actual interview. That's what I would have done by now. If you're still here, this is what you need

You halt the flow of traffic in a crosswalk to retrieve a fallen penny, / cheer your good fortune, and whisper: landmine. 

i decide / the poem is // about me (i have / been told i have // narcissistic tendencies).

Love Story (1970, dir. Arthur Hiller)

It’s comical that the rich kid with a building at Harvard named after his family is a hockey bruiser while the baker’s daughter not good enough to marry

in the middle of making up a Tokyo bureau chief
i remember keeping E under the impression i read
all of Infinite Jest for our whole three year
relationship  & probably since 

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart.

—Tara Wray, photo editor 

(2014-present) Time in New

Sitting in the Montreal bus terminal I make a decision. To eat the last of my weed candies. 

When was the assertion of blackness anything other than an interrogation.
I’m fat and black and queer in america _They don’t know what to do with me

One summer morning, Lyle Condy was cycling down the steep, straight hill of Magdalene Road in the city of Cambridge. His bike had a bell in strict accordance with local ordinances regarding cycling. 

1.
My father died on Christmas Eve, 1986. I was three years old. When my mother broke the news, I responded in a startling way. "Death is just a figure of speech," I told her. Of course, at age

Months ago. Here it is me at the grocery getting flowers and deli meats and here’s the little boy with his face soft and fluffy and pink. 

Roxane Gay took me out to dinner five years ago. It was Roxane, Ashley C. Ford and me. We were in Indianapolis and it was the first time I'd met either of them. I remember thinking wow this is one