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.

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. 

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.

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

I bought a compilation of Michael Jackson Number Ones when the Wal-Mart Supercenter finally opened. It feels right to have viewed the future from my bedroom, door closed, music up.

In fact, even if I could reverse my reach through the years spanning us and stop you, I don’t think I would.

I return to the kitchen and walk in on Jodeci pulling a syringe out of her neck. She takes the rope from my hands and uses it as a tourniquet for my arm.