Once, I heard a boxing coach say you don’t punch a thing if you really want to achieve your objective—which is pure harm—you punch through. Since that day, I have often thought of the other side.

We can bump / Gucci and Sosa and Future while we sip lean with Sprite, / and talk Drill like Foucault talks about nutjobs, and talk / dying like Chiraq rappers. Like we’ve been there. We / haven’t.

In the woods beyond the property line, Henry and I find what decades ago used to be a farmer’s burn pile. Under years’ worth of leaf litter and yesterday’s snowfall there are remains, hard things fire could not destroy: twisted and rusted metal and scores of glittering glass bottles.

ENTROPY

I saw you at the library.
You said you’d gone to mars on a ‘commercial spaceship’
or something.

I removed three honey sticks from my pocket and offered you one.
You shook your

THIRTEENZ

MyHalf-FangedMouth
SoundedOffAwkward
InAnAlcoveYesterday,
StillStufffedWithMother
TongueUncomfortable
SansBrainStem,Prettily
WarpedOverBlueBürd
Wingz.¡Ha¡ThisBodyCan't

The wife cuts off the husband’s beard & keeps it as a pet.

a drunk salaryman in baggy gray suit
buys a meal replacement bar
from the vending machine

THE COIN COLLECTOR

I met the man in control of this vending machine gig for my eight-week review and was told I might get a break down the road. He believed I had the promise and potential to

One

Can’t write now would be too sad to read.
My celeb crushes get married or domestic.
I’m like a pair of dollar store sunglasses
look good but the fuckers snap!
If anyone, anywhere

Ohio

we belong in the grass. my twin is in every photo. we made our way out of the alley, rockford files dialogue, fedora, the curtain light is half-awake. climb the rock wall like the rest of

Should we smash the cricket of silence and smear its remains on our knees?
How do you feel about rap music? Do you know A$AP Rocky?
I don’t like Lil Durk yet; I don’t like Rich Homie Quan yet—it’s 2011.

Dude, You Killed a Marsupial

            for my brother

What I’ve learned about opossums

since that gruesome ordeal

a few summers back

is that:

* they have

Marlon Brando works at the full-serve Sunoco

you come in tell me of your night like the boys all stared at ur tits

sex feels like a burden when you aren't on drugs

AJ

he was special

and gigantic

i imagine his hands sometimes when i’m feeling bored

and want to think about middle school

they were fucking huge and could probably seriously

Those birds swept down with great urgency, talons punching the water, tearing into fish flesh, sometimes with a force that cut the salmon in two.

I don’t mean to fetishize your death, I mean to say we are both corpses in a way. I mean to say that we always already were animals dying into the soil, inhuman.

Wednesday

Once upon a time it was Wednesday, and when the husband and wife awoke, all 
of the windows in their house had been replaced with beautiful panes of stained 
glass. The dining

Truth is Scottie Pippen / wasn’t born. He hatched from an egg that was stuck / to another, slightly larger egg. The opposite of Mugsy Bogues / on an airplane and the oxygen mask drops down, / for his seat only. Mookie Blaylock dresses up as Mookie / Blaylock for Halloween.

Banff: Running Away

I was young enough to believe that when moments felt significant they probably were. I saw sacraments everywhere

                                              so knee

I want to spank Diane Sawyer
In fact, I'd pay upwards of
fifty dollars for it, at least
if she was wearing white cotton
panties

In my fantasy
I wonder
I stop and ask,
"Is

A Theory of Blue 

Telling the truth can be done in an American way, without irony or self-effacement. We begin with the image of a flag, the vastness of space. Suddenly a hole in the sky opens

Ars Poetica

I want to say this
simply: I was out
near the river; the trees
were bare, and would be.
I saw no blacksnake
in the undergrowth,
but that doesn’t mean
it wasn’t there,

Ochlockonee

Sawtooth palms, and the hymns of
a leftover Palm Sunday
lard the air with the gentleness
of some imagined Christ:

see the hand reaching from
the coloring book, the heavy