that was the year that all the carnivals came to town. sounds like a fake small town thing, but when you live in a small town, all the things that happen are fake small town things, except they’re

I'm Not

Losing / floundering
ignoring / coasting
retreating/ rethinking
stalling / shrinking

I am settling my debts
clearing the inventory
and wiring the electric
to be seen in my own

i think you can learn a lot about a person
based on their Super Smash Bros main. or starsign.
or by asking. how convenient to be told? to learn
in spite of our own misgivings. part of growing

I wake to the shuffle of wind along the sill.
The soft moon hue weighs on my blanket, saying nothing.
From the fragile dark, experiences remembered
become rocks tied to my ankles and feelings churn

Years later, he asked “Do you still use this email?”
and I replied “No.”

Sometimes
trauma is a prerequisite for softness.
It depends on where you’re from,
and who you ask, but you should always ask.

hemos vuelto heridos de una guerra que todavía no empieza
yo perdí una de mis extremidades
y él las perdió todas

caught in self-asylum / let it rile ‘em

1. Teller

as a teller i tell people things

like no

but mostly yes

and

can you wait a minute i need to ask my manager

and i smile and give dogs treats

i didn’t

according to my mother, men
are just thieves rifling through another’s calm...

oh raised-hand Matt. you
centrist bastard, your mouth kool-aid-stained
with stubble, it gushed and fucking gushed.

You can never return to the track. A hard truth, heaven knows, but heed me— delay the wreck
and coma. Take a longer backwards way and savor that last downhill run, the final door to close.

...she told me she had lived in Singapore
too long to call it home anymore. She hated her name so together we made
her a new one, & like this she finally belonged to herself.

Remember when Lena Dunham said

She wished she’d had an abortion?

On the other side of the apocalypse, you will become something unimagined,
you will dissolve and finally become the wind—then, you will be enough

i ask if i could be june
my birth month he says all days any days
for a smile like mine

Fuck an infographic — where’s the paper?
Operation: Get Paper to hand out paper,
‘cause all my people needed was their papers.

The Day I Drove to Dubuque (an Hour and Fifteen Minutes One-Way) to Find Out I Had $1.09 Left on a Books-A-Million Gift Card

poetry in real life is January in Iowa,
watching from my

After My Husband’s Hernia Surgery

His belly is rounded like
he’s just beginning to show

as if the healing
is its own being inside him.

I tie his shoes, kneel down
to find the

i impart resonance on the amber zen
in a manifestation of waterford
and drink down the vacuity      to expedite
enlightenment:
a numb tongue and thawing cheek     and the ringing     reaching

Twitter Prophecies

are sour wine.
You say don’t stop pap
smears after age 65.
Cervical cancer can
still happen at ninety.
I say paper boats
still sail the river Styx
home. The sky
is a

On Penguins in Brooklyn

the protagonist feels like
she’s never leaving,
stuck on a moving walkway
in the middle of cincinnati
international airport
in kentucky,
headphones dangling,
she

Equivalence

How heartbreaking to find irises tilting
to full bloom in one direction
as if waiting for someone to come
down their path are one symptom
of light’s partiality. A heart

montreal

baked brick, dark bread,
breath sinking into a hot, grey bath when
caught in smoke between compartments
on the metro. pink lights from
the townhouse on rue de rushbrooke
blinking away

September Dream

An eternity, for the Asphodel, is a brief few
months. It’s been a decade, as the crow flies,

ten days on Venus, ten Venus days,
each, longer than a year.

When I’m without