i bought an essay with someone else’s money when i was 23
just to feel what it was like to steal words
it was the sickest i’ve ever been

“They were getting ‘the talk,’” Carmen says, pausing dramatically, “and in walks a huge nurse wearing a robe.”

Looking back, the efforts we made were desperate. We took walks. In bed, he fed me grapes; chilled, out of the refrigerator. We took weekends off work, spending money in small towns where there was

The moon is small and perfectly cut.
Blinking between trees like the cursor
you used on your middle school blog.

Later that evening, when confronted about my absence, I told her that my grandfather said I looked sick and should go home. His senility always made him my reliable scapegoat.

Miracles come more seldom now.
It’s satellite interference.

Ribbit

...the products we couldn't get here. They'd come home with stories of innocent smiles given to bored border guards while they wore two pairs of jeans under three dresses. The trunk of their car filled with Cherry Coke and flavours of chips we couldn't comprehend. Cheap rum. Meat. Cigarettes. Electronics. 

In the far-flung depths of the future, historians
will look back to this day and say, "This
is where it all went wrong."

This was the “Year of the Whopper”:          
I ate a Whopper.
I ate a Whopper.
You dumped me.

Going big on tsk tsk.

There’s something about a horse that floats.
Watch her neck hover over the half-door
of a stall, or her sunlit backside rise

my brain is on fire
so i can tell by the colors
that winter is coming

My perverse compassion had destroyed all traces of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

Everything is cosmically predestined when you are stoned. She put off the trip as long as she could, eating three-day old pasta out of Tupperware. This is what they mean by mind-numbing. This is some strong shit.

Benjamin Franklin’s wife rubbed his paper fingers all over her body, saying, "I’ve got you now, Sweet Baby, I’ve got you now.” 

A Tribe Called Quest
We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service
Released: November 11, 2016
Label: Epic Records
Length: 61 minutes, 16 songs

All of my favorite people are

Do you remember everything I said last night? she asked. 

You mean do I remember you crying and saying you loved me?

when i was born, you bought a hill—
a great mound of clay and bone
and you named that mountain after us.

She needs a quick blowout, so I comb and press her golden hair until is a sheer curtain fluttering around a face thrown open to love.

“I love watching you get dressed.”

“More than you love watching me undress?”

once I dated a girl w/"good is dead"
tattooed across her chest she turned out to be right
but not the way she wanted to be

When I am not exercising or performing space walks or cleaning or developing vehicle software, I watch the sun rise 16 times a day.

I had written a few aborted short stories before, but really I specialized in aborted novels.

I think about small green soldiers searching for Crater Lake.

The stories in Virgin blew me away with their strange sexy intelligence and overall aliveness.