how to wear a crop top to office depot

trying not to think of you

when i connect with someone

i start to fear rejection

because that’s what

i’m used to

not being famous

feels

I made eye contact, made the purchase, stored it between other magazines on my bookshelf.

1.

I found a copy of Spirit of Elijah by Wilson McKinley on the record shelf of the Goodwill in Bellingham, Washington. Like many of the thrift store records I own, I bought it because it looked

Because there’s a god for the water on your skin
when you’ve come from the lake. One for the absence
of flowers in a vase, for every pump and filter organ inside my dog

One god isn’t enough to

“YOU IDIOT!” I scream, but only in my head. For 25 years now I haven’t been able to speak my mind, especially not to a stranger. Enrolling in Glenda’s Eagle Training course is supposed to help, but for now I’m still a grounded hatchling teetering my way through week three of the seven-week program.

Heavy Metal Love Song

Street drafts off the two-tone carpet in my underworld            

Air so much wetter than the memory of it        sharpness of weather
spoiling for more life

Two buses

No Vision

Two teenagers set my state on fire
with a bottle rocket. We flee
between coasts like politics.
I work three jobs so I can buy
new brakes & a tattoo of a heart
shooting lightning.

“And there’s got to be some guidelines for this.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Lionel said. “So what are they? You just let me know and I’ll follow them. By God, I will.”
I didn’t have much for him. I sputtered some nonsense about my side of the refrigerator and if he saw Doritos in the pantry, especially the Cool Ranch kind in the blue bag, he should just assume that they were mine. But that was pretty much it.

There’s an elderly couple camped out in the parking lot of an abandoned Bennigan’s.

Full-sized, luxury RV, Weber grill, folding chairs, red Coleman cooler.

These folks have options, and yet they

On the street, the music thundered from an unseen source, day and night – but it was, oddly, only audible from the sidewalk. Once ensconced inside our house, we forgot about it, as we neglected so many external things during medical school.

BEFORE LIFT OFF

Before the plane’s wheels begin spooling air
in an act of contrition 

as if to say                   this place, it’s fine,
                                    but the next—you

These days writers are obsessed with themselves and once upon a time they were exactly the same way, obsessed with themselves. Once upon a time, there was a man who worked at the Strand and his name

All day I look forward to hours of empty house
then I’m there and the whole place itches. I go
not home but the place that tries so hard to feel like it.

When my partner finds a stone she likes, she shares its burden with me. She never seems to have a place to keep them.

You notice you’re being followed. Headlights in the rearview mirror—though they all look the same, these seem somehow familiar, like a pair of eyes you’ve seen in a dream.

A spoonful of vanilla ice cream crosses oceans of history. Hold that dollop on the back of your tongue.  Consider.

Today, nothing could be whiter than vanilla ice cream.  Vanilla means white.  It

reasons why my father sent me a picture of a dead coyote

to start a conversation

to assuage my worries

to prove he knows my brand

to remind me of my mortality

to remind me of his

to

Asynchronous
Or,
Damn You, Tinder
In Which
A Mobile Dating App Provides Reminding that
We Are All of Us the Playthings of Chance

Waiting in line at the DMV that squats at the center of

They snort cocaine in the bathroom and talk about transferring to Pratt or Parsons or Columbia. They talk about how they’ll become famous designers or fashion models or authors in New York City. 

“God is good!” my uncle Albert chanted, and his congregation agreed in full force.

YES! AMEN! YES GOD, AMEN!

“God is willing to heal you of all that hurts you, my children. All he asks for is

My sister once told me if you clench your butt cheeks together you won’t cry, a tip she learned from a hairdresser. I took a deep breath and went back to my office with my boss, squeezing my ass cheeks as tight I as could. 

Please Hold

I’m patiently unraveling
on the phone while the automated service
explains overdraft and accrue
and rollover – I’m not talking to anyone
but I’m pleading nonetheless.
       I’m

The more time spent at the sunglasses booth, the more willing you are to endure pain and suffering just to feel human again.

First Week of April, Los Angeles
(as transcribed from the iCalendar “what really happened”)

1
got crab and salmon sushirritos with the ex and put on planet earth 2 right at the moment sir david

Peter wakes up first and texts me, hi baby, hi boo, hi honey pie.

And it was at that moment—seeing that light and realizing that other people were together in the world in that very same light while he was in an alley watching himself on TV—that he finally felt something: an overwhelming, honest and simple sense of sadness that felt like a beautiful release.

At eighteen I got two stars tattooed on my ankle. I used to tell people a variety of stories: they were falling stars, they were the stars from Peter Pan, they were the North Star and its unnamed

The trouble began with the intern’s new coffee pot.

“Look,” Daniel paused and took a sip of water, “I was going to introduce you to my mother. And I realized I wasn’t ready. And then I thought, when will I be ready? When would it be a good time?