"I’m always looking for ways to pay more attention. I thought maybe I could be a better writer if I knew what private investigators knew, if I could see a clue for what it was. I’m still learning."
to gain followers I use my body then / I lose them with my poems
After I turned thirty-five, the age of forty circled me like a shark. My dread of it intensified with each passing year. On my thirty-eighth birthday, I braced myself. The movement in the water had
The machine sleeps in the corner. Its dreams are projected onto large white walls where we watch them and record our reactions.
while i / in half-lotus / pluck stubble from / my belly
“Get in here!” yelled Grandma. “Carrot Head is gonna sing!”
Daisy was going to community college classes out on SE 82nd and trying to figure out what direction her life should take. Her classes were Dental Hygiene, Religious Studies, and Ethics in Improv Comedy.
It’s the sun, I told myself again. Too much sun makes people too hyper, too happy, too sure of themselves. What we need is a little rain, some dark clouds, a berating storm.
Rain drags its cage / through the neighborhood. You / see nothing but // trenches. Rusty shovels, / the alien rocks sprayed / like genitals.
Ironically, hours before we went to see Whoopi, I texted two friends from my bathtub that I didn’t think I would ever write another essay. It was “too hard.” “People only want to vilify you, so they look for words to use to that end, and ignore the rest of what you’ve said.”
For weeks after, I watched California burn / out my window & on the evening news & the ash // in my cheeks became the only way/ to pronounce home.
Jack Daniel screams his way down my throat & it’s a dry thrust.
McGuiness in bed with chow mien. Eyeballs floating in melatonin.
“Watch your back,” moans ceiling fan. TV glow damaging optic nerves, retina, etc.
Trapdoor in Benzedrine bottle on floor. Deep in
My dog keeps biting me when he’s scared / and, like anyone, is always scared.
When, on August 18, 2015, the dog the internet called “The Devil” was finally cornered by the Salt Springs police department several of its victims, those sufficiently recovered from their wounds,
Now I’m not dating anymore and I use the gold duffel bag to haul my belongings from one house-sitting gig to the next.
Every writer knows the rule of ‘write what you know,’ but the interesting thing is that you don’t really know what you know until you write it.
With the bobby pin I’ve kept beneath my tongue all morning, / my fingers spring the lock to my parent’s bedroom // where mom’s cherry lipstick glows beneath a seashell lamp.
You joined in, and told Danielle that she should only serve us drinks in diamond pimp glasses.
WEED MILEY. Come back to us Weed Miley. I plonk down on the water sofa. Weed Miley screams into the mirror. She had invited me to join them. Weed Miley talks here, I then talk. Weed Miley enters wearing a cloth nightgown.
I based the Australian on a man I met in a coffee shop when I was 19. We went back to his place and did coke together, and he told me all about himself...
New Jersey as land of claws & fangs & deep fields of grass that stumble onto the side of the highway // New Jersey as fields of soft dirty ice // New Jersey as blondhairblueeyes slapping you in the face at lunch in the cafeteria in front of all your friends
The cartels were losing the battle. Everywhere they dug they met a new obstacle. There was freshly poured concrete down their northwest tunnel. They discovered recently installed top of the line micro security cameras. They came face to face with growling German shepherds.
At first, it seemed like a poet’s dream day job. A job of watching, then describing.
