Understand, neurotic perfectionists are mostly calculated

thinking about how all of it started

thinking about how the poems ends

Once, at the watering hole, a man with a knit-closed eye

kissed me until I spat up a silver coin.

four small test tubes.

Your face, my light. What terrible things I’d do for it. 

But life was good for clowns back then

Trump & A Syllabus of Goals

To gift you the stink of goats.
To gift you bright whey.
To neon-bright your mouth

with sorrel & rind
& mouth for you
some many hums.

To

Portrait, with Negative Space

Running faucet, orange light hollow as a pill bottle,
images submerged in a bath of chemicals, blooming
into black-&-white being. That was the only

Tiny Evolutions

okay so let’s talk
about the exes we mythologize
for the wrong reasons   like leave
a toothbrush at my bathroom sink
and call it love   and baby
I’ll promise ring your

MONUMENT

YOU SPECIFY IN YOUR LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT “BURY ME WHERE I STAND” SO THEY REMOVE A CHUNK OF TILES FROM THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF THE GOLDEN PANTRY’S CHECKOUT COUNTER AND THEY SET YOUR

Class Aves

Anyone that ever heard the call
of the Rodrigues Solitaire

is long dead, but its name is trapped in stars:
turdus solitarius—
named by a sensitive astronomer.

Does this

On Miracles

Jesus trained a dolphin to swim up under him and lift him over the waves.

Jesus wanted to show everyone his trick.

It looked like he was walking on top of the

Asian Pen Name*

Mine is Kien,
which is useful
in cases
where I need
to prove
I am who I say
I am,
like the time
a cop pulled me
over and said
Sir, do you know
why you

Dear Katie

The movie we watched the night you told me you were leaving your husband for a girl with skin rough as a butcher’s block no storm could ever smooth clean. When sharks were falling from

Being There

Describing my body is easy
because I do not know what it looks like.

From above, I imagine my face
when it experiences a thrill.

There could be more to what I’m looking

Red Teeth

Left work early to meet delivery peeps at my building. 100 weeks ago we ordered a couch. Tell ya, I've never seen two guys more pissed off to have to deliver a couch. It was like they

Outside

I keep finding myself loitering in the snow, watching strangers clink their glasses through the window's frosted glare. In my Midwest apartment I am always scrolling through photos of

How Come No One On Twitter Is Talking About This

The eye   a camera humming across the top of the earth : cavern  
gully    ravine    gorge    Far below    a tiny man jumps into a tiny

i can tell what age he lost his virginity

I’m just going to give up on these capitalist dreams and buy my self some land and a goat. 

just ugly things I don’t want to look at.

You mean to say, “hello” or “good morning,” but you know that, between us, that would be strangely inappropriate before our morning cup of coffee

Nest of resin and surf wax among blood

“You’re damned if you do and damned if you won’t”