The past kept living inside me like a cheap Timex. “Where are you going?” the store clerk said. But I heard my father in my head, practically dragging me from bed to bon voyage me out of Newark when this terminal was merely stairs, no moving sidewalks...

1.

Walter Benjamin begins his essay “Unpacking My Library” like this:

“I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am.”

I can relate. This last summer, I moved all of my possessions from an

She almost said yes until she saw the stain.

bambi on Nov 6, 2015

He is the new dopehead in town..........WORTHLESS!!!!!!! !!!

Scrawled across the garage door in big red letters are the words "Die Snake!" 

I built a Ferrari inside my white mouth
The shape of it was blue  and up came the sun
I said hey, Ferrari and with my white mouth   huffed it good, huffed it pretty
The throat of your pale moon heartscape contained me

For the thousandth time
I am describing our arms
and how they are
the perfect length

Please, let it fuck me if I have it. Right? Fucking USA, again. If one person is making a bona fide constructive statement, the other nine are making you their bitch.

Aimee looks back to how things were.

You scare me kind of           your admission of an emo phase  

I like getting fucked in my feelings.

Nighttime near Fort Jesus.  We point our phones heavenward and hear about the latest rave death.

Eventually, I turned to memoir because I wanted to stay in scene. I craved space. I believe in the connection between poetry and memoir. It’s no coincidence that some of our best memoirs have come from poets: Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Lucy Grealy, Mark Doty, Maggie Nelson, and Sarah Manguso—that list could go on-and-on.

According to my parents, I was obedient from birth—I emerged in silence and then slept through the night. I was just never interested in rebelling—even as a “punk,” I got good grades and was always home by curfew.

I didn't imagine you could grow into your harness, that it could embed in your skin, that you could plod one circle for so long that actually stopping would open up the ache in your body.  

And it is easy, so easy / to welcome them into the poem.

The wind isn’t really knocked out of you. When you fall, you panic, hold your breath, tense every muscle. 

The killer dispatched the boyfriend easily in the kitchen, and then he had an idea.

Here’s a statistic: After reading Brian Oliu’s Enter Your Initials For Record Keeping, I’ve spent more of my life reading Oliu than playing basketball.

This was a painstaking choreography of getting whacked in the balls.

Yes, the girl says, / thus entering into an unspoken agreement / that a black shirt with prints of golden parrots and martini glasses / is the only requisite balm.

somewhere on the internets, in a dusty archived sent folder and a long forgotten inbox is our turn to Genesis chapter two verse eight 

When God is sleeping with his eagle, / we are like a woman with a peacock / under her arm telling the river hush. 

Sheila Heti’s words penned: BLOW-JOB ARTIST. I have always wanted to be everything to everyone.

At one point, Justin’s stick got swatted and went flying. He hesitated for a moment, before strut-skating to the bench. This is not something a hockey player would normally do, just leave an unbroken stick on the ice during a non-competitive game. Someone eventually pushed the stick over to the dark team’s bench. “Pick it up,” Tony heard him say. For a second, Tony thought Justin was talking to him. Turns out he was talking to his bodyguard.