grandma was real creole
man
BRIGHT bright

As the real world feels increasingly devoid of magic, we are correct to admire those writers who attempt to interject some magic back into it.

By now you tell me how I feel.
You tell me
what I will do and how I will act.
You do the creating
for me,

I think ten t-shirts would be too many to write about, but I’m perversely hoping that twenty-two is somehow not too many. A writer can, I think, pass beyond “too many” or “too much” to a sense of rightness or aptness. The paradox: More than too much is sometimes not too much.

I can't in good conscience watch a sixteenth season of Big Brother.

I'm going to abandon everything / after this poem 

Violette moved away from Calvin toward a group of rhododendrons.

Calvin felt calm.

He thought about God.

[victory lobe] 

tiny towns or a dog could keep me pleased  

for six months, then I’d wear felt triangles  

look like December, have needles on me

molt on the plane to the

Skateboarders have to be tough. It’s not if you’ll get hurt but when, not if it will be bad but if it will be bad enough to keep you off the board.

I usually distance myself from someone after i’m physical with them.

I sent a text to my father, telling him I saw three coyotes. My father is an admirer of the natural world. I sent another text about a nearby house that had been abandoned. I'd noticed the word “SATAN” scrawled across the front door with blue paint that morning.

My novel is my father, I am saying, and it too is the best art I could make but not the best art I will make. For I am 33 and my feminist Jungian therapist says often: the beginning of adulthood is forgiving your parents for their sundry errors.

Halfway through Pilates class, the teacher decided to use telepathy. She said she was sick of the sound of her voice, always repeating the same cues. 

If you require more of your ferret than simple love and affection, our staff of specialized trainers will provide you with an ATTACK FERRET for your security.  

thinking about how all of it started

thinking about how the poems ends

The problem was I’d forgotten about the change in altitude. The grief counselor had suggested a getaway, so I fled the Alleghenies for the Rockies and the guest bedroom of my best college friend on a quiet block in Denver.

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

I am reading a poem called “George Washington” in a book of poems called George Washington in a bar called The Library in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where I am spending my last twelve dollars on four beers and my last four dollars on tipping the bartender because happy hour still hasn't started.

Okay, so there’s that sound again, and you know it isn’t Tommy or Lindsey trying to scare you, because they’ve been asleep for over an hour and you’re certain the sound is coming from the basement

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