Five Poems
Ashley D. Escobar
I vomited
up a prophecy in a dive bar,
inhaling hot dogs.
I vomited
up a prophecy in a dive bar,
inhaling hot dogs.
Fucking Bruce was what I lived for,
That and my writing
That and these fucking poems
“you’re bad at finishing beverages that aren’t alcoholic,” you told me
You must stop dating
physicists, that sere barnacling across
the cold, leeward faces of rocks.
writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing
The other thing Belle did
Was burn three holes in my thigh
With her cigarette
Revenge for the chaos I’d caused
I, I, I, I, the angel speaks herself
I finger a ring of keys and wonder what doors they might unlock.
There I was on Clement Street in the morning, trying to grow another body.
It’s a sin,
to desire different architecture, I’m told
in a cellar not far from here, wine waits years to peak
before a bottle is cracked open only to empty
a bruise.
Burying me # alive
in training pants and # rags is my son’s
# gift of sorts
Southward
You are the big blue sky
I never thought you would have
The moment when you turn your head over
So the water freezes
So the ginkgo falls
So the wall full of photos is also pale
And
just looked outside
to see what’s going on
whatever it
is thursday
precious, beautiful
whatever as ever
and i can’t
pry my hand
off the windowsill
i’m driving the future
it’s a
You had one of those
shag haircuts that all lesbians
in Brooklyn have we sipped
your favorite pink drink
From champagne flutes as the
sun bled crimson and the air
crisped between us you’ve
Hiring Bodyman
This city hates me
I get so tired
of waiting
for you
I groom myself
Now all I have to do
is show up at your door
& you’ll call me sweetheart
forever
I hate
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
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“Lutz’s work is a marvel of the possibilities of language. Each of her sentences is an intricately crafted thing, deeply complex yet crystalline in its clarity . . . her command of each and every word remains supreme.”
--Mira Braneck, The Paris Review Daily
Garielle Lutz is the author of The Complete Gary Lutz, among other books.
"[Her Lesser Work] is a collection of mordant and formally inventive stories circling themes of, let’s say, desire and escape within repressive structures."
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