[Idea for a picture]

A painter is painting a portrait with an observer beside him. Inside the portrait is a naked woman trying to cover herself with her arms. It may be a Portrait of Venus, or

In the summer between Michael Sam’s selection in the NFL Draft and the day he was cut, his jersey ranked as the second most popular of all rookie jerseys, behind only Johnny Manziel of the Cleveland Browns. Almost like there are gay sports fans.

Here's your spagetti and wheat-balls. Don't worry...it won't taste bad.

A few weeks ago my wife told that I have some mild hoarding tendencies.

She said she was sick of it. The thousands of marijuana roaches I'll never smoke. All the goddamned books lying

It’s time to stop relying on sunsets to help move us away from tonight and into tomorrow.

I pass a woman who holds a red polka dot Christmas music box in her lap. I never see her turn the key, but as I scan the aisles for my specific things—the white balsamic vinegar, the slivers of blanched almonds—I hear Jingle Bells faintly, somewhere behind me, no matter where I am.

Look at me.

Look at all the neat things I can do. Can you do this?

Follow me. Do like I'm doing. Put your stomach flat on the floor, then – whoa! – see what I'm doing? It's the worm. I can

Sometimes you have to say fuck it and cry masterpiece.

Luis was walking home from work one evening when a man stepped in front of him, blocking his way on the sidewalk.

The man was dressed in a black coat and he was wearing a tan hat.

“I have

A request to the new tenant

Walls bare but for paint & hooks, floors bare but for stains & nails,
we leave insides as we find them; yet of neighbors &

I’m 23-years-old going through a mid-life crisis. Well, not quite mid-life considering I’m convinced I have less than seven years left to live. 

People want their maniacs explained. But there is no autopsy deft enough to expose how sensually disfigured a mind can get.

The afternoon we chose the new chief of Cyclops Island, we stood in a circle at the top of the isle’s highest peak, heads drooping, as we squinted and sweated in the sun. The chief had positioned

Portrait of Toothless Girl and Dead Hare
After Claudia Cortese and Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”

Dear Christina,

Ma shot Ell in the chest on Sunday. He got a toothache right after,

My Mother Reads From Her Dream Journal

I.

We—you, me, and your sisters—are in a room the size of a broom closet and you say to me What do I do with this jellyfish? and I don’t understand

GIRL POWER

i’ve slept with someone who had a girlfriend
somewhere else i’ve slept with someone who
told me they loved their ex-girlfriend immediately
after sleeping together i’ve slept

That ability to dissociate—to look from above. You think it would make us save ourselves, seeing the planet from afar, feeling like with one hand, maybe you could fix it.  

As David Lee Roth straddled a giant inflatable microphone, Alex Van Halen banged out the staccato drum opening of “Hot For Teacher.” Soon, his brother Edward Lodewijk “Eddie” Van Halen turned his

February break

Turkish Regis Philbin traveled
to Turkey to visit his
95-year-old mother who is close to death.
So I took February off.

Close to death.  Like, close to schools
and

Boyish Pursuits

The ocean is a junkyard of sheet metal
with headlight eyes and grillwork teeth,
wave after rusted wave dragging hood
emblems and hubcaps to and from the beach
like so

Exposing your teeth is mandatory in these situations, and if you don’t show your teeth it is at least subconsciously noted, questions are being asked in the back of the other person’s mind. Where are this guy’s teeth? Is he ashamed of them?

Earlier this year, Tobias Carroll interviewed me and asked, “Your previous book, How to Predict the Weather, had a blurb from Botch/Narrows vocalist Dave Verellen. Has there been any hardcore that’s

Watching the musical Annie is something like a rite of passage for redheaded children. I’ve met so many carrot tops in my life who grew up humming the tunes of Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin,

We tell each other the names / of our dead. The cities we live in // are gnawing then burying / the cadavers of opulent dreams.

Eat It Now

Love Life

Wednesday morning, I grew a third eye, and no one had the basic human decency to look the other way.