You make me want to write bad poetry...

Sangria at a soup shop. Pieces of peach and apple in the wine. The skin of the fruits unpeeled in my mouth. Sangria even though it was winter, early evening, cold and already dark out. Goblet-sized,

"Elon Musk Is Moving to Austin" and "Good Joy"

It’s a Tuesday at 3 pm, which means it’s time for my therapist to remind me that I am a victim of a violent crime.

The house on Olean street stands as it once did, a formerly bright white house, the sidings been torn off, revealing dark greenish-black shingles. This house, the black sheep of the neighborhood.

"sorry to ping / i just want to know who was too good for who..."

My father locked his children up in a house for years for fear that they would die of pesticides from plants. More than that, we were locked in our rooms with a gate.

It was a sidewalk funeral.

"High School Kids and Gonorrhea" and "Bearclaw Asshole"

There’s a story my father used to tell from his days as an ER resident. An old lady showed up for care, and when he asked her what had brought her in, she calmly raised a hand, showing him her palm. It was pierced straight through with a long darning needle.

"Get Low" and "Fire"

Bet you’ve only made lahmajoon from scratch once. Bet you’ve made pierogi dough once. Bet your attempts at grandma’s pilaf recipe are crunchy and undercooked, noodles burnt, stuck to the bottom of the pot.

In April I had the good fortune to zoom with Justin Jannise just a few days before his debut poetry collection, How to Be Better by Being Worse, was released by BOA Editions, Ltd. A wonderfully

I approached looking at thirst traps like I did those Magic Eye 3D posters I’d stared at as a kid. If I stared long enough, I believed, I could see something real in those thirst traps.

One day, I end up on the side of the road next to a bobcat who is thrashing after being hit by a car.

I would fit in perfectly in the belly of any claw machine swelling with plush toys. Imagine: me & the duck with the very pink cheeks & the pillow-shaped corgi that’s all heart— wouldn’t we

Bread has its own history, its own holiness. Flour was pounded from prehistoric plants then roasted on the hot stones of Neanderthal fires. Ancient Egyptians milled grain between giant rocks, dark, mixed flour, imperfect loaves with heady scent.

I -- Book

In every house of our memories, there is a book. In the basement of mine, there is a paperback with pictures of the sea. 

The underwater camera is smeared with the blurriness of

The first six months I took hormones I was frumpy and ridiculous looking. I didn’t know anything about makeup or styling

Anything I speak, I know to speak a second time: My brother 
is dying. My brother is dying. You are not my sister 

tearing through an Italian restaurant, blistering
with what I have given her

This is how I want to remember us: the tattered rooster blanket, the wine bottle with a pen through the cork, Herc’s fur in tumbleweeds in the grass, Audrey’s red fingernails...

more intimate with the fit of a Gildan 
shirt versus this thing hovering some 
distance over my head always threatening 
grey blonde grey depending on mood
secrets held in pinprick dots

Because you are ten, pink skin streaked with freckles and sunscreen, sea salt on your lips as you run your tongue around your ice-cream, and a man with a grey wire moustache puts his hand on your leg and asks your mum when he can marry you, and the sand of his handprint sticks to your skin no matter how hard and raw you scrub it.

There was no mystery to why we learned these things. Our parents told them to make the good times a little harder, or the hard times just a little bit worse. What is security but another opportunity to be creative in our fear.

After the announcement & its sunder, 
              I flood the afternoon light into knots. 

Pocket a maiden name, banter into twilight & 
              its constituents. Mend the

There were no innocent bystanders,
except a herd of deer, unable to perceive
the color orange. My method consisted
in having a plan, but I was letting the dirt
do my thinking—I’d had it around so