By late August, Mary-Beth was sweating on her front porch swing, a bottle of Budweiser resting on the table her daughter Madison gave her for Mother’s Day a decade earlier. Mary-Beth had been watching
sadness dies badly like a waiting room plant
every body is mostly water
and will still only sink or float
it’s so maddening
it takes me two hours to finish
an apple
sometimes the human in
CRYSTAL THINKING
Dream logic gets my sober companion drunk
Vomiting silver in the private beehive of our wagon
I went to the cemetery and played you a too-fast solo
Mud seeped in the ass of my
The moon came out, riding on a motorbike, his head hatted, silver-blue, attached.
We compiled our snacks and made for the playhouse basement.
On my first job I worked for a woman named Jeanie who owned a soda fountain, thrift store, and tavern. I worked at the soda fountain fixing milk shakes and simple sandwiches for the few customers that
He wondered, "What if I never get out of the shower?" and just like that he never did.
"Tight coils come / up floating in / my husband's peppermint..."
I was nineteen, still felt like a kid, and Tom seemed to like me.
She is thinking that when you make love, your brain opens, and everyone knows what you are thinking, and you know what everyone else is thinking, so your husband knows what you are thinking and can control you.
I told him about Nebraska and how it was a dried up ancient ocean bed, how farmers harvested corn and clicks, how there might be kings buried under the freshly tilled soil or angels who dusted the August crops.
after Ruby/Hilary
For just
fifteen seconds
out of my twenty-
six years living
I imagine
myself
a white woman
bones breaking
in a new way
my
I packed into this room during my second year's semester break of university. For all the years before, I slept with my mother upstairs. Our building is a three-story building built with rocks and
