Only scotch and cheap champagne/ retain their reliable flavors.

Smoking is like hooking up with an ex-girlfriend: you know she's bad for you and that it won't work out, but it feels so familiar and comfortable and so easy to slide back into.

For the residents of Oak Morrow, entropy is an art form. They break their own windows and crash their cars into their living rooms. Grannies and pets can usually scoot out of the way before they’re crushed under the juggernaut of creativity.

Mama sleeps in bed with us. The blue of her ghost sleeps underneath me. I love her more than anything. What does she think when we are naked, when we yell, or mimic, imbibe, curse, cry, shake, make love, roll over on her, want to die?

They are plastering on lipstick in pay-to-enter toilets around the corner from the mosques, where old men sit on back streets selling toilet seats, spices by the shovel, flashlights, and Audrey Hepburn t-shirts

They rise up, a sullen, sorrowful/ army of reproach, staring,// stone-faced but eyed with fire.

He reveled in the chase, giddy when just out of arm’s reach. When to catch him, that was the question.

Every time Hector left his home he wondered if it was for the last time. It was Monday at 2:45, so he was standing in the bedroom near the tall mirror, staring into his dark eyes. In the past, she would lovingly help him dress with her tiny, perfect fingers. She…

you and i exist outside of the chaos and noise entwined in eternal embrace

"I can't believe my 'best friend' and my 'girlfriend' would actually start dating if I authorized and coordinated repeated threesomes for us!" Robert Eww was saying, holding aloft a dagger and book, with an olive wreath around his head.

I built the fence myself, strong and high and aesthetically pleasing. It was high enough to provide privacy on both sides, but from my bedroom balcony I could see everything. More than I wanted to see.

A sturdy and goatish original by know-nothing punks from the sticks. Who cares if we were puny and smelled like fresh milk? For a few years we played and rocked, even turned the Appalachian soundscape a little brown at the edges. At least at first. Mainly

as i sink down into the shadows crawling like a worm past cold bricks centuries old in my blood

I reached for that hair and the air zagged white...

Do I feel good about any of that? Not really. But I seem to find myself asking over and over again, why should I care? That's something that's never happened before. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I kind of liked it.