I ask you to toss me something heavier than your name
to hold, less perishable than the peonies stolen
fresh as bruises.

I looked up at Rudy, his back hitting the air like a ruler. The mind is an act of balance, he said, looking at me. It is a lever for the body.

Our hypothetical date tomorrow is at a show for the band Tennis. I have never heard of them, but I trust him. I say I will work my magic to get us in.

I’ve been told by plenty of people in this first year of parenthood that having a child is like having your heart outside your body. This always sounds to me like a horcrux.

Who could need this much flesh? Four pounds of Louisiana crawfish, one pound of Alaskan king crab legs, six pounds swordfish steaks, a pound of oysters, three pounds lobster tails, five ribeye steaks, three New York strips, six T-bones, four packs of stew beef, two family packs of chicken drumsticks, and enough shrimp to fill five plastic shopping bags.

How harrowing it must be to swallow the syrupy scraps of night,
then ask for more.

Last summer everyone was wrestling. Claudia started it. She said It’s been so long since I touched someone and threw Tobias on the ground.

I love you best
like this: sun in your hair, a heavy daze
of pollen on your eyelids.

The Barrington, CT Boston Market offers the creamy richness of all Boston Market feeding centers.

Under the ribs, between the lungs, where no periscope lives
to view the damage of long nights spent in cold underpasses...

HEY THERE, Bill Baxter. This is your friend Sue Parnet. I just now saw your name pop up and decided it is time to see how you are doing.

It was then that they strode past me. Mid-thought, my attention snagged on the powerful wisp of her. She wore a spandex outfit—itty bitty sports bra and bicycle shorts, her lean legs sprouting from chunky Filas.

At the Metropolitan Ave Kmart, there was a parking lot in the sky.

Cam asks when I am going to change my pants just to prove to his pierced girlfriend that he doesn't like me all that much. I tell him I wash them daily, but he says that doesn’t mean it’s not weird.

I grab her hand,
thinking it’s my own and tell her I’d eat it too.

Before Hannah can protest, I get out of bed, put on gray and pink checkered pants and a black top. Having romantic feelings for a woman is new territory; her laugh is all I can think about.

DAY 10:

The part of the novel where your character goes to Applebee’s to forget.

He told me he was in the process of determining the next stage of his life.

LaJoie dropped to their knees and shouted out the phrase "Oh dear god!"

There was a frog in our house.

I contribute glasses of water to prevent dehydration, / towels to mop up leaks on the floor, and witticisms,

He works out of that clinic on the corner of Sydney Road, opposite the 7-Eleven. After I visit him I often walk up the road and get an okay bánh mì from the closest vietnamese bakery.

When we talk about a writer’s work, we are talking about the things she makes: poems, essays, books. It’s a mercantile word to apply to the artistic process, and yet it’s an inescapable one. Short

We’d thought he only taxidermized celebrities’ pets. But then we saw him crossing the yard carrying Mickey Rooney.

Like Richie’s “Hello,” Adele’s “Hello” is also an ode to longing.

She smiles and waves at me. I return her smile, mine more faint than hers, and I see her catching sight of something or someone behind me.

A couple was making love outdoors while a grizzly bear watched—it was a tv show— and I thought, this reminds me of me.

I have never touched a cow or even
another man.

Under the pretense of repairing things, I go to prove I am not broken.

I will never read this essay out loud, so let me take some risks:

Almond, salmon, Episcopal, peony, Adidas, melancholy, mischievous.

In my head: Owl-mund, sal-MON, epic-SKO-poll.

I add force