Portrait in the Mirror Behind the Bar
Rich Smith
Anyone who loves Tim loves him for the same reason.
He hit one home run. "Did you ever hit one?"
He'll ask, as the day begins to wash over his face
and he leans back to stare at the baseball
Anyone who loves Tim loves him for the same reason.
He hit one home run. "Did you ever hit one?"
He'll ask, as the day begins to wash over his face
and he leans back to stare at the baseball
after A.E. Stallings
That his fingernails are immaculate, shaped
into thin arches of moon. That he files them
in the locker room before games, between innings in the
Self-portrait as fogged up car. / Self-portrait as Home Depot // parking lot at 3 AM, no cars, / no people. Self-portrait with // grocery cart with someone else’s / left behind list.
Looking for the right angle
He poo-poo’s my relationship to nature, even when I tell him about touching the dead goat.
*
An intimacy that can hold the world?
An intimacy that
It’s the new plan, Shooter. Poetry for broken systems. Insurance rider attached.
You tell Jeff Bridges you fear
your dying breath will be just like
the whimper you make when trying
to remove glitter polish from your
toenails. He sets his guitar down on
the fur
Because sharks mate / by just passing for a moment / before separating forever and / because his dog died...
At a certain point, / no sex becomes a little Branch Davidian
Kathy Acker was sick of shaving her legs. Every time she shaved them she cut herself. It didn’t matter if the blade was dull or sharp. Inevitably the blade would steal pieces of her knee.
DREAM
Our legs are stilts. Beyond our ankles
are the blunt ends of crutches. Our feet
are missing. But our hands are fine,
Boy says. There’s a rope suspended
between our bodies. Our
a split bowl of suns dissolving a table
One girl watches the boys make a bomb of birds
There was a thunderstorm
but nobody wanted it. It just sat there...
September 9, 2007
Add incandescent dedication to six gold gloves
and get a damaged biceps tendon, a bad back and
a "loose body" removed from the bicep joint
in a
coach wont stop yelling
"watch the signs from the bench coach!"
but i hate bunting
- Brad Epperson
Swing Through
In sheer disbelief
Having swung through the fastball
He
Love is like a museum. You have to look around, experience things, and then leave.
"[Her Lesser Work] is a collection of mordant and formally inventive stories circling themes of, let’s say, desire and escape within repressive structures."
-Walker Caplan, Literary Hub