When a strawberry’s
sore, it leaks

New ballparks keep sprouting up,
like summer sweet corn. 

Come closer reader, please,
I didn’t mean to insult you. 
I’ll let you punch me
right in my asking face.

The full moon may strike you
dumb and limp and lost
when bat readies to encounter ball
and you hit it high as the moon--
still the ump declares, You’re out!
before you’ve moved a step from home. 

There’s no TV or radio here, so it’s only later we hear that our guys lost big
at home on Blake Street

I would go back now, though, live in the nervous fidget
before I said I like you & kissed her braces
with my upper lip & bled all over her teeth.

There is something about listening
To a baseball game on the radio

each pitch lost in the peripheral blink of an eye

If I leave rambling, incoherent apologies on your voicemail at four in the morning, is it still impressive that I’ve quit drinking?

I awoke in a forest of yellow
trees. When the air turned cold
they erased themselves.

I’m hoarse and feverish. We sing in the streets, “Feelin’ good was good enough for me, hee hee,” but then the breakfast booth only has two seats.

I wear a velvet piece to the therapist’s office and she asks me to close my eyes. We agree to experience an illusion of me dancing...

I do not leave
the houses I’ve built, I carry the nails and raise

the walls around me

I can’t stop watching teenage boys eat shit at the skate park.
It gives me real pleasure.

You breathe and scream so deep, underwater it sounds like song. 

A wedding is coming
up, and it’s mine

Every time I walk to the library
I pass my old friend’s house
who doesn’t live there,
or anywhere anymore.

Once a year I decide
I don't love you. It's

today. Watch me
not make you breakfast.

The child is only
this flesh I grew

and you tore 
out of me.

Now it stirs in the

I've seen my friend Taylor sleeping
mouth open sometimes, one time with a boner

Whenever I've awoken him, he has
acknowledged my presence immediately

and put his hand in the

To love is to understand
the tsunami--

that it's just a thing the sea does
when it's been too long

missing the

but that's all about to change. My murder ballads, well, they prefer to terrify. I want to talk more about titular heroes. About what it means to kiss a goose. I mean, kill a goose. I want to do

chipped finger

nails the door shut         a swastika

earlobe   an appalachian woman

swollen & eating dirt       coercing

tiny white knots      you

Greek Yogurt

my daughter and I were watching TV
it was some show where a group of overweight women
lose a bunch of weight and wear bikinis in front
of their families and significant

where’s my dark booth damp panties mid-day fluff and relief

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

If I had any money I would leave the country. There aren't any people here and I know them all. I only want to express myself, but you can't say things like