The pinwheels of my mourning, having moved to a windless town.

Rarely do I think of death while gnawing the bottom of a vanilla cone.

every great sadness has occurred because someone / decided fate with their bare hands.

My Left Arm

I was a fruit cake meat loaf of influences –
my name was Sloppy Joe,
I was canned pineapple slices
left out in the sun.

I called you soft names
against all reason,
on

my body is an american / casket, shove the corpses / through my eyesockets til they spill / from my mouth

When my children walk by, it will be like looking into the sun. Your children will have to bow their heads. My children’s eyes will be the color of electric blue icebergs.

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.