I want to walk in where I walk in & not think about me or you or anyone else we know—I want my recycling to be perfect.

my angst is still young / and highly flammable / something interrupted / meant to be read out of order / one chord change to another

Oh well. I threw my lover down a well. / I ran Father over. Hid Mama’s pill. / I’ve never been good at taking advice.

It’s been five years, but this boy still / shines when he smiles. I stare at his jaw / as we shiver on the rooftop of this rundown / hotel, waiting for the waiter to get his beer.

No secrets fill a drowsy whale, / perfectly hollow gullet, / its song only speculation, / music its only meaning.

You halt the flow of traffic in a crosswalk to retrieve a fallen penny, / cheer your good fortune, and whisper: landmine. 

i decide / the poem is // about me (i have / been told i have // narcissistic tendencies).

in the middle of making up a Tokyo bureau chief
i remember keeping E under the impression i read
all of Infinite Jest for our whole three year
relationship  & probably since 

When was the assertion of blackness anything other than an interrogation.
I’m fat and black and queer in america _They don’t know what to do with me

Digital Hellos

An erroneous message of two equals,
in a future program.

The Internet was given an italicized quote
above a colored text box,
he may have wanted to kill me.

This

I am trying to come out to my father / but all he wants to talk about / are the 1985 Chicago Bears

Before roosting in the city, starlings dive—
five thousand deep in flock. Like cells they follow the
law of localization. Bound by surroundings. Step into a

crowded elevator and take on

BROWSING FOR CHAINSAWS

The carwash that neighbors
the boarded-up hospital
suddenly leaks back to life.
A rust-eaten truck rumbles by,

a keg of insecticide banging
around in the

All i want is an apple but no one / is picking these days.

and a vague behind-the-eyes tired from reading about destruction until after midnight

[The wind of that dream lasted a horizon]

The wind of that dream lasted a horizon
of years in my stomach, leaving a lone tree

bent in the gesture of listening. That’s why
my hand

Today I kiss her knuckles & we lumber home like mammoths.

Lyrical lines of color dripping down: a chemical skyline.

The only piece of advice I’ve got for anyone is to shout your precious name into the rain & wait for a response. 

He’s called the rat king because of the actual rats  that hang from his shoulders like epaulets.

A garment can withstand swell if the body can withstand laceration

(The baptism.)

The first time I had sex
my hymen didn’t break
and you missed your bus

We wrote Mary Karr on
the margin of my arm
in pen

I washed around her
then let you lick

The president lands to a reception line & it’s all already campaigning again always. The president lands & I already took a shit this morning.

In this piece, the sculptor will sculpt herself sculpting. 

Lying next to her, I wrote the last chapter of the Bible and surrounded our bed with Doritos.