Each year, the clouds lowered. Each year, the boys' hopes crept closer to their grasp.

She never sticks around for harvest (though she convinced you to plant rosemary, lavender, zinnias, to think of time as a full moon, as a thrush’s song), you’ll say, but O the planting season. The spry seedlings at the start.

Arranged in front of Papa were a cup of coffee, his glass eye, and a shot of whiskey.  One by one, they would patch him up before he left for work.  The sun hadn’t yet chinned the horizon, and we sat

I knew you'd come undone...

"By the Seashore" and "The Return"

Still, he wants me to keep strutting down my freak lane, says “Gucci” like “Coochie” on “White Freckles”.  

My almost-ex was freaking out in the way only men with egos can.

"On Trepidation" and "When I'm Lonely, I Shop Online for Things I Don't Need"

"32 questions for a photograph" and "Blue Door"

Always, I am navigating some half-abandoned landscape— part future, part past. Whenever I have a companion, it is my ex husband—the man who, after our divorce seven years ago, moved states away, leaving me to raise our kids mostly solo. On this particular morning, it finally occurs to me that these dreams may not be normal.

Jeff O told us that he and Brian H split after watching Chasing Amy...

 sat on my couch for twenty-four hours popping oxycontin while I watched a full season of Gilmore Girls. Lorelai and Rory were not on speaking terms and I missed my mom.

My brother always comments on how big the sky is in my little stretch of western Kentucky. We crane our necks and peer at the sickle moon, the unblinking stars.

It doesn’t sit right anymore, so neither does he. But in the Brooklyn neighborhood where my mom grew up, he’d walk on his hands for an audience of Irish-Catholic children. Older now than he was then, they’re still in awe. 

If my father decided to do it...

There’s a picture of you at queer prom, in the photo booth, faces alight with total bliss.

the dictionary says living being...

One evening you come home to discover Boris Yeltsin standing in your kitchen.

a man stands on stage his cue cards flashing...

Twelve hours later, I surrendered to sleep at a rest stop.

The text said: Hey! I think I just saw you cross the street (I’m in the red Prius). How are you?

On Human Origins

You take a half-person’s body, then another half-person’s body, and you connect them together and put them inside the mom’s body. Then they grow and grow and grow. Then you

This is how we played: one of us would lay on top of the other fully clothed, “go dead,” and see if the other could move. He relished it. I would lay on him, every part of me heavy and slack. It was

On Day One, Larry-the-Lizard quits smoking
and eating saturated crap.
Day Two: he buys a hard pack of Dunhill King Size
on his way to Fatty Patty’s Burger Palace. Why?
Because the purplish