in the midst of a historic crisis, i ride my bike to the river

I vomited
up a prophecy in a dive bar,
inhaling hot dogs.

I can tell she’s not convinced. But I’ve been Googling symptoms: confusion, nausea, loss of appetite, changes in sleep patterns, visual hallucinations, erratic behavior.

waylon in the kitchen
pancakes
the pain of a tattoo gun on ribs 

Drainage stains. Snow turns to shivering rain. The rear facing concrete walls.

“you’re bad at finishing beverages that aren’t alcoholic,” you told me

You must stop dating
physicists, that sere barnacling across
the cold, leeward faces of rocks.

writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing

At the head of the conference table sat a man scrolling on his phone, whom Michael intuited was the leader of this secret society. 

I finger a ring of keys and wonder what doors they might unlock.

It’s a sin,
to desire different architecture, I’m told

in a cellar not far from here, wine waits years to peak
before a bottle is cracked open only to empty
a bruise.

Burying me # alive 
in training pants and # rags is my son’s 
# gift of sorts

Coolness is an anchor, a fortress, a cold and remote puritanism.

The other day she showed up at André’s apartment in the middle of the night with a red rose and, in the bottom of her purse, a steak knife...

Waxing Phase

Sparrow day
draining to red

red wall of night
night a voice

caught within the throat
the throat a tunnel

a blackened river
a wing bending

a moonrise

Night

He sits alone on the beach with his feet in the sand, cigarette in mouth, eyes on the water, though there’s no one out here who knows him, and it’s not clear what he wants, unless what he wants is to be alone, in which case he picked the wrong part of the strand.

I worried I had magically bloated between 9 a.m. and lunch time, even though I’d only eaten the prescribed six saltine crackers.

that was the year that all the carnivals came to town. sounds like a fake small town thing, but when you live in a small town, all the things that happen are fake small town things, except they’re

The summer I was allergic to tap water was the summer I lost all my friends. School was out but nobody wanted to be around me except for Joel who wasn’t really my friend to begin with but sort of became one afterwards. It was understandable. I couldn’t shower and, well, to be perfectly honest, I smelled bad. Joel didn’t seem to mind, though. He worked the check-out at the general store and taped his ear to his head.