You will forget by your fourth birthday these your shifting first memories—your father’s goats at their graze, their black tongues slathered across your face, the chickens prancing and clucking upon the dirt of the yard, the spare trembling grasses and the crazed droning song of the grasshoppers, their brown juices streaking the lines of your palm.

I’ve been facing Sundays the same for a while now. The whole day feels like one of my quixotic childhood summers slamming shut. And, like that younger me full of dread, I’ve thrown off my sleep

Re: Re: Personal Ad #5 (A Kiss Worth Three Lives)

My father was in the war and told me never to ask
if a soldier ever killed a man.
It doesn’t matter.
On our third date I’ll order

.I

Be a 22 year old American boy—get really drunk and embarrass yourself in front of the beautiful, freckled, 29 year old Italian Volcanologist that invited you to drinks with her 31 year

When it is time to get the jugulars, we move our bodies out into the streets with our best cleavages bared. We move as one woman, but it turns out we are one dozen women from the same neighborhood. 

I Was A White Girl In A Crowd Of White Girls In The Park

The NSA did nothing after I left a document open on my laptop. In it, I changed your name to new and interesting terrorist

Don’t believe me if you want, but the hole just appeared one night.

I. / A yawning / Pitbull puppy / dipped in gold.

Writers in M.F.A. programs assume, and are often told, that teaching means time away from writing—that after responding to their students’ work, professors rarely have energy left for their own

The boy has horrible teeth and a bicycle. They’re yellow, his teeth, and after school the children take a tree branch to his mouth.

–

His bicycle painted in bird shit: he rides for hours

My Little Ponies™ and the Search for the Blue Crystal
or
Breaking Brony
A cross-genre work of fan fiction

The sun rises on the great and beautiful land of Equestria. Applejack trots

*
i'm gandhi on the beaches
of northern california
i take comfort
in the fact that
the government watches me
on public transportation
i can relax
i want to stop a subway
between

Hobart: We’ve seen each other at the last couple Mission Creek festivals in Iowa City, and it was there that we got to talking this last year a little about your new book, surfing,

In sandtiger bellies, the young eat the young. You could fit a new-hatched sandtiger pup in your hand, but you shouldn't; they are pink, squishy cartilage, knife-tip teeth, and only the first one survives, chasing siblings down uterine hallways: hide and seek to death. After eating all his brothers, the last one standing sucks yolk like CapriSun from his sharkmom's eggs. By the time the sharkmom gives birth, the pup is the size of a six year old child. 

It’s pity sex for both of us, me and Karen and her glass eye, in a motel room off the interstate.  

burrow

you traced along the freckles on my back
with black ink,
like a crumpled constellation

i looked at the picture and smiled,
like a lonesome girl reading her diary aloud to an

The American stillborn sense of justice has worn its grave so truthfully all things pious count no more and didn’t then. We want poignant documentaries, exposes of humanitarian needlework to rally

As I write this, on a Friday afternoon in early August, the Phillies are losing 7-2 in Washington, and Scott Hairston is walking up to the plate to pinch-hit for the Nationals. My phone is

It is not easy to remove a heart with a spoon from the chest of a man, nor is it clean. The spoon was purchased 48 hours earlier from the Bed, Bath & Beyond on 9th Street. The Nicole Miller Moments 5 pc Flatware Set was $24.99. The salad fork, dinner knife, dinner fork, and soup spoon were disposed of. Only the teaspoon remained.

you can call me the Boom Doctor

I have your emptied-out torso on the operating table

“Go back to sleep,” I hissed at Perry. It was 2:00 in the morning and we were in our newly purchased condo in Mammoth, sleeping in twin beds in the only room that was habitable. The other two

Tops Like Arrows

Dan’s Trans Am smashed into the guardrail,
him doing 75, all hopped up
on Dexatrim and Coors Lite.
I remember him, my younger brother,
 grabbing his fleshy waist when

I’m wet and wearing white pants
I’m wet and wearing
White pants.
I’m wet and
Wearing white
Pants. I’m wet

Pants.  I’m wet
I’m wet and wearing white pants.
Wearing white
I’m wet

At first, you think it’s going to be that old cliché:  men and their brown liquors sitting in leather chairs in front of fireplaces, fiddling with models of ships and speaking their “big important

I dreamt about walking around Ikea by myself and buying a lime green ice cube tray. I drive to the post office and pick out a large flat rate shipping box. I put the ice cube tray inside and I

The first time my neighbor's place burned to the ground, I wasn't his neighbor, but he told me about it.