Song for 2 Phones

     What is that?
The line outside
the Maria Bamford standup
we went to last year.
          Send it to me.
     What is that?
A sugar maple on the hill
shedding Gatorade

I am not a pinch, a spoonful, a half a cup of light rivering down into the stomach where, I should know, the heart truly resides.

Traffic

It’s 60 degrees in January so the birds have decided to just stick it out because who can afford the time-share anyway and the flowers bloom completely off-key like the conductor is drunk

Consideration of Deferred Action for Chilhood Arrivals

This is when your humanity ends, when a pen hits this paper.

...I'm part of this thing where fish learned to walk...

"lucky" and "trophy"

Tom Selleck, in his best reverse mortgage voice, volunteers to call your parents and break the news that their daughter almost died. Your mom is happy to hear from him since she always liked Magnum P.I.

Big Bob sat beside me and watched women he classified as MILFs walk their kids to the pool with large, clear tubes.

She arrived at my apartment at 3 a.m. with a soft suitcase on her head, a handle positioned over one eye. I could see the netting in her matted blonde wig. Her broken eyeliner and stained lips

After we finish doing the dinner dishes together, Mario heads into the living room and picks up the remote control.

“Guess what?” he says, turning on the TV. “New Zealand is playing England in

There was a time I had a flower in my mouth...

Previously on...
Part 5  ||  Part 4  ||  Part 3  ||  Part 2  ||  Part 1  ||  Prologue

The house on Olean street stands as it once did, a formerly bright white house, the sidings been torn off, revealing dark greenish-black shingles. This house, the black sheep of the neighborhood.

"High School Kids and Gonorrhea" and "Bearclaw Asshole"

Previously on...

Chapter 1a: Converging
Chapter 1b: Crisis 
Chapter 1c: Fighting the Fog

Chapter 2a: Two People
Chapter 2b: Divergence

Our return to campus one evening to discover spray-painted in black on the university’s entrance wall, “ICI ZOO ETRANGER” (HERE IS THE FOREIGN ZOO).

Against the grinding fever of suppressed 
song, against a muzzle’s searing, sound 
is a muscle.                 The body’s rebuttal, 

a kind of clamoring                             
held

Previously on...

Chapter 1a: Converging
Chapter 1b: Crisis 
Chapter 1c: Fighting the Fog

Chapter 2a: Two People

It is December 21, 2020, the night of the Great Conjunction. For the first time since the 1600s, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest to each other they’ve ever been. NASA says you’ll be able to

To the left of the counter stands a dead rat on its hind legs, taxidermied, with one front paw extended and one middle finger raised. An insult that looks like benediction. A pair of antlers sit atop