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.

through the hole in / your Reeboks I contemplate our future.

Just This Morning

A New Jersey train derails and crushes the station.
I wake slow, make coffee on the other side of the country;
finish the cup while hundreds are rushed to crowded

I said to the / ceiling fan / I am here / to break / the sadness.

most of the time / i am / bored and warm

blm land

this belt of the nation feels equally
bible and rust and sun, where
mute billboards offer us
teeth cleaning for pets.
my molars resound
for the dogs,
dumb and deep-eyed,
and they

Let’s create fake accounts and try to seduce each other. 

I can almost split your face in two.

It’s not the enormity of the half-eaten doughnut. 

Because I love in the manner of eating I am sure whatever I take from you will pass.

The man who bought Hitler’s bed did not have nightmares as a child. 

You were the hands

Woke up alone today in my own bed
after a solid sleep for the first time

in over three weeks, feeling strange there,
almost rested, but not quite, how big

my bed was around me, how new

I carve horses out of watermelon. I swallow / fish eyes like gum drops. I pray under / neon chandeliers, string chrysanthemum / in my hair. 

i think i was an onion in a former life / i think you chopped me / lord how high were we last night

Remember the word “party line”? It meant that everyone in your town who wanted to could hear exactly what you were saying. How fucked up is that? Wasn’t that great?

Remember when every stray dog was a love story and the snow that night cleared the crust that had gummed my eyes shut? No, me neither, but fuck it. Let’s get lit one last time. 

 I wish I had that glorified high school / experience— where some boys / are chugging expired strawberry liqueur / and everyone, I mean everyone, / is sprawling on the grasscarpet

When I exhaust all other forms of exploration, / this landscape will deny me at the border; / & I will turn my gaze toward a darkening / sky filled with stars I no longer recognize.

Sometimes I say novels ruined me in the way they ruin all young bookish girls, slowly and tenderly rotting out the light and making room for the sweet dark.