We preened our signatures in the cheerful attic, Owen’s royal insignia and my fallen few ants.

hints on health

you touched my skin
in the crowded afternoon
my blood like a bloom
warm and erected

our bodies are useless
in winter
my need for excess
diminishes to the pursuit
of damp

They said that Xianrenzhang took your heart because she didn’t have her own. She was looking for one that was just the right size, not too big and not too small, that she could slot into the cavern in her chest.

sadness dies badly like a waiting room plant

every body is mostly water
and will still only sink or float

it’s so maddening
it takes me two hours to finish
an apple

sometimes the human in

Confession 8: Your first semester at community college was supposed to be a fresh start. 

Hector loved, loved, loved having a black friend, but he could never admit it.

crazy horse

half full heavy
whipping cream in their drywall construct
see me mob hammer ?
smack dab middle of july
i ask and clam up

that thunder is new to me
racking up the bill
instead

The thing about mason jars is that you can stuff them with anything you want: pasta, beans, ashes.

Britney’s People

Britney is a crystal swan born from a cave where they manufacture crystal swans. Britney’s People are her protectors. No people are as important as Britney’s People because it is

Sometimes I imagine I’ll get a long email from her, explaining why, when a family reunion stopped her from coming on the trip, she gave up on our friendship. Did I somehow offend her?

What am I doing on a train to Philadelphia?

Do you know how to leave this Earth? Because I really need to leave this Earth tonight. Jettison my skin. Supernova in a brilliant burst.

Fragrance

I never lost what I had out of eye    the piano minded surplus or acheless weather    what ever the
          night still oily with a personality is          there is no sense         

They were goldfish, and not even the pretty kind: they weren’t even really yellow, more like the color of the roots of your teeth, more like the color of a pus-glazed mosquito bite.

CRYSTAL THINKING

Dream logic gets my sober companion drunk
Vomiting silver in the private beehive of our wagon
I went to the cemetery and played you a too-fast solo
Mud seeped in the ass of my

... at Stereo, you never had to ask “where’s the love,” because it was everywhere, in everyone, even the atmosphere...

The moon came out, riding on a motorbike, his head hatted, silver-blue, attached.

"Utterance of a Folding Fan" and "Op. 64 in C#"

“We found the calf box,” she tells your grandmother on the phone. “Not a scratch on it. Yeah, we found it in what used to be the living room.” 

We compiled our snacks and made for the playhouse basement.

The story has hit an obstacle or maybe a dead end. It’s not a dead end, exactly, but it is an overdrawn bank account.

"Peak Inertia" and "You don't know if you should laugh at my poems"

He had a Camel Blue, a glass of sweet white wine, just like last time. It’s about 20 degrees cooler than it was then. I think I am wearing the same outfit; shitty, baggy, innocuous jeans.

Fuck you.

As a pack, my Korean-Italian-American cousins and I were little foul-mouthed figurines made of compressed carbon and steam. On their own, they knew how to stand.

On my first job I worked for a woman named Jeanie who owned a soda fountain, thrift store, and tavern. I worked at the soda fountain fixing milk shakes and simple sandwiches for the few customers that