We can stand here / on the corner, arguing... 

The first dog barks. Second dog. First dog. Third dog joins in. Then a fourth. Then a cacophony and I lose track of the dogs barking in a distance, down the quiet street where my father and I have nothing left to say to one another. 

Xenia and I had been cheating on each other with the same woman for about three months

It doesn’t take long to find a new lover...

I had the pleasure of meeting the poet Richie Hofmann for the second time this February when he came to Bloomington to give a... more

"Note to Distant Friends" and "Ode to the Crop Top"

You will read my restrained but subtly brutal birth story and finally recognize that we who give birth are dauntless soldiers returning to the fight and we are also the old men ignoring the bombs because we have animals at home we love too much to go on and we have never felt more alive than we do right now.

When my wife drives off without me, my first thought is that she must have made a mistake.

"Tim" and "Pear Tree"

After that, I gave up / on finding a good doctor...

All the tigers met at a restaurant. In the wild, they would have hunted in isolation, but territories had gotten smaller and old cats had to learn new tricks.

This new doctor smiles as he enters the room, as if we’re sharing a joke though we’ve never met before. “Tell me,” he says, “how many people get your name right on the first try?”

i used to write on adderall like a million years ago or when drinking also but thats stopped. like once, last year, i wrote a short story while drinking, and i cant even remember where i saved it so idek if its any good, bc after a while i got distracted and started watching YouTube makeup reviews.

I think about cataloguing all the days I feel like dying. But then I think Ivan would find the death catalog. Ivan would use it against me.

Of course there’s little difference between now and any other time, in relation to the unforeseeable aspects of tragedy taking place; it is just as likely that some improbable event occurs here in the restaurant as any other place, including the drive home, during which all it would take is a flick of the wrist from any of the countless passing strangers to change your lives.

Like if I were at this apartment in 2009 I’d be talking to some guy with scraggly teeth and pockmarked skin and a hoodie but he’d also be like, unconventionally handsome, but you could tell the last time he talked to his mom he said some fucked up shit and probably beat up his siblings growing up, and I’d be thinking ‘this seems like…my only option…’ 

We decided that quarantine

would be fuckintine

except then I got a UTI

People I Don’t _______ to anymore. This is a prompt inspired by Chelsea Hodson’s essay, People I Don’t Talk To Anymore.

I write about dark things a lot but not without at least some hope…or hope for hope.

I have seen charlatans and I have seen television ministers, and  I was beginning to get that vibe.

I wrote for twenty years without anyone paying me or offering me confirmation or telling me that what I wrote would be welcomed by the world. Quite the contrary. 

The visor mirror in the passenger seat was missing, but in its place was a sticker that read You’re Beautiful. 

“But you named him Davey and my name is David. You might change it up next time.”

“I know your name,” she said.

Being sleep deprived while in quarantine is like living in this dream I had a few days ago where I died but didn’t lose consciousness and for the rest of the dream I floated over a muddy creek with no ability to interact with the world in any way.