you want back to ‘93: to soft skin / & nights driving down dirt road / & the desire to still be— / breathing, you want to say / but instead you think of all the things you wish / she was not

You’re beating him, he needs to protect / the plate and his at-bat, throw something / outside the zone! something he can’t / possibly hit, think how afraid he must be / of you.

Interrupting

      and above the dryer on the back porch she let hang three pieces of purple glass—sometime broken—taped together and hung from a string, let little cat swat a tiny paw—claws

Re: Re: Personal Ad #5 (A Kiss Worth Three Lives)

My father was in the war and told me never to ask
if a soldier ever killed a man.
It doesn’t matter.
On our third date I’ll order

.I

Be a 22 year old American boy—get really drunk and embarrass yourself in front of the beautiful, freckled, 29 year old Italian Volcanologist that invited you to drinks with her 31 year

I Was A White Girl In A Crowd Of White Girls In The Park

The NSA did nothing after I left a document open on my laptop. In it, I changed your name to new and interesting terrorist

I. / A yawning / Pitbull puppy / dipped in gold.

The boy has horrible teeth and a bicycle. They’re yellow, his teeth, and after school the children take a tree branch to his mouth.

–

His bicycle painted in bird shit: he rides for hours

*
i'm gandhi on the beaches
of northern california
i take comfort
in the fact that
the government watches me
on public transportation
i can relax
i want to stop a subway
between

Absorbed

I was returning to a Texas town I had no business in,
and when I took him back into my bed, snuck into
his office between classes and locked the door,
I knew that you knew,

burrow

you traced along the freckles on my back
with black ink,
like a crumpled constellation

i looked at the picture and smiled,
like a lonesome girl reading her diary aloud to an

you can call me the Boom Doctor

I have your emptied-out torso on the operating table

Tops Like Arrows

Dan’s Trans Am smashed into the guardrail,
him doing 75, all hopped up
on Dexatrim and Coors Lite.
I remember him, my younger brother,
 grabbing his fleshy waist when

I’m wet and wearing white pants
I’m wet and wearing
White pants.
I’m wet and
Wearing white
Pants. I’m wet

Pants.  I’m wet
I’m wet and wearing white pants.
Wearing white
I’m wet

I dreamt about walking around Ikea by myself and buying a lime green ice cube tray. I drive to the post office and pick out a large flat rate shipping box. I put the ice cube tray inside and I

Tritina: Die

Our lives, the lyrics of ‘Die! Die! Die!’
Less the scenes in Die Hard or Die! Die!
My Darling! or Juliet Montague’s “when he shall die,”

The way we feel when the

Desireé Panda and the Lee Van Cleefs

A murder dinner for beckoning.  Let’s have a grave way with phonics.  Let’s tangle bright inside one another.  Holding forks, holding knives.

Come out

After a couple of Martinis, // one may regard oneself pleasantly pixelated. / I cure nerves with a ten-hour Netflix binge, // then curve my vertebrae to you / while our phones update.

Washer and dryer as hapless duo, / each crashing and beating the other // to shit, idiot tandem: all this / while standing in place.

For weeks I thought only of this We are a body We will come undone A table of snow and a table of sorrow A tea that smells of a house burned down

I consider the narrow chain of cars pulled through city parks like kite-string.  In linguistics, mora is a single unit of syllabic weight.  I consider yelling at the yellow cab to add more syllabic weight to my overall point.

Where Everywhere Snow, There Grass

There was a patch of grass. There was snow
around the patch of grass. There was me.
I am not about the snow; the snow is not about
me. Although

Thing Being

               Écriture feminine

I was told on a train I was after

delicate—or something to do

with feathers. I heard bird, bird

bird. I heard the word

In first grade

we had to make
a little booklet
about our dads.

You take a sheet
of paper, fold it
fold it again

and then draw
a picture
on every page.

Well, on the