I just thirst for barbed wire
 

shadows cast like heaven’s
hands down over her eyes.

The boys stood in the vacant lot outside the convenience store, which was closed today due to a special occasion. There was even a sign on the door. Armando was getting high again. Stew was quiet.

He’s still rambling about my womanhood, my untapped, ethereal potential, when I reach for a tissue and blow his hot load out of my nostril.

To repeat something can be a form of stuckness. But it can also be an ecstatic cry.

When I ran away at fourteen, I didn’t know
I was listening to an animal urge to find my own way, like all
teens

But her coup de grace was when she started bringing a white boyfriend to our parties. He was a real champion. His name was John.

I did become very close to many people in the McSweeney’s universe. A lot of those people were great, and a lot of them were just ambitious people with no integrity whatsoever.

Dolphins are too good for this world, I think, as I reluctantly, fearfully, kiss one on its domed rubbery mouth while someone snaps a picture.

One day her daughter says to her mom, in front of you, that she wants to go to art school, just like you. And it is the first time you realize, her mom does not want her daughter to be like you.

Motioning the stone girl over, she
deadpans, “It’s grenadine, not blood.”

Walking through the dense forestry of unrefrigerated 24- and 30-packs, Pete was in search of something that would stand out from the rest.

He looks at me a little like how the alley cats look at the mice behind the house, but I don’t mind.

I try to imagine the various people the specks of bubble gum had belonged to. Try to give them faces and purposes.

I can’t imagine anything better or worse than whole-hearted devotion.

When the angel came I was young.

gen x girls grew too cool to touch and millennials gayed the world the rest of the way limp in their piteous attempts to save it.

“I like the way how you wriggle when
Your mind doesn’t agree with your heart”

The hangover was ruining the romance. Last night I woke up a friend and made her drink wine—Chateau 2016. I had to deal with my nerves somehow.

KS

Our translation of home.

He had lost his virginity to nothing less than the beast of the swamp.

and now i teach street

kids from akron how to

use google docs, and

how to express themselves

What’s your name? Like an oak
I want to carve a heart
into our washing machine.

as all my lovers
fly out of my chest

We started as open, NOT poly. This was a very important distinction to us, despite not having a working definition of either types of relationships. It was, we both agreed, substantially less cringe

Definitely one poet holdover is just being a magpie for weird