POSTCARD

It is just beautiful –
the waves look like nothing

and the stars

choke on the air.

VARIOUS... more

tracy

what if i opened my mouth and a swarm of bees just, you know. the weather said it might rain, and i was like, 'okay.' this is... more

I Wrote a Eulogy for What We Used to Be

I sank into
what seemed like an endless abyss
of blue distraught and infinite... more

Icon

you have a room in your apartment just for painting pictures.

you sleep on the floor next to your computer and iPhone. the... more

HOMILY

In a world this red & watery, I have no choice but to be a wild animal waiting to be killed.  These laddered roses... more

My friend’s friend dated Mario Lopez in college

There you go, in the papers again. Your mouth a hawk dive; your fists up and... more

Big Boogie, Big Boogie, after watching the way you move through the years
I bet you could dance across water and sometimes I hold... more

307.9:
COMMUNICATION DISORDER

what hath God wrought stop
Houston
           we hold these truths to be... more

Discourse is a pretty forceful process, perhaps the most forceful of the superstructural processes available.
Everybody wants... more

[Idea for a picture]

A painter is painting a portrait with an observer beside him. Inside the portrait is a naked woman trying to... more

It’s time to stop relying on sunsets to help move us away from tonight and into tomorrow.

A request to the new tenant

Walls bare but for paint & hooks, floors bare but for stains & nails,
we leave... more

Portrait of Toothless Girl and Dead Hare
After Claudia Cortese and Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”

Dear Christina,

Ma shot... more

My Mother Reads From Her Dream Journal

I.

We—you, me, and your sisters—are in a room the size of a broom closet and you say to... more

GIRL POWER

i’ve slept with someone who had a girlfriend
somewhere else i’ve slept with someone who
told me they loved their... more

February break

Turkish Regis Philbin traveled
to Turkey to visit his
95-year-old mother who is close to death.
So I took... more

Boyish Pursuits

The ocean is a junkyard of sheet metal
with headlight eyes and grillwork teeth,
wave after rusted wave dragging... more

We tell each other the names / of our dead. The cities we live in // are gnawing then burying / the cadavers of opulent dreams.

At my father's funeral
I thought I was in heaven because that's where I was told he was.

Liking the world is not easy, though sometimes it is / a large wave that carries you.

geode geode

Before, the possums’ noise had been an angry hissing, but now their voices were becoming sweet, even musical, the world of them trilling and humming into their endless, private night.

In the end, there are five bear cubs underneath your porch. You name them after U.S. Presidents. Taft dies of starvation.

I wake up in a wheelchair. I wake up on display. 

The world will end on a warm night. Muggy, buzzing dark in Chicago.