1611 28 22
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I felt/
no need to show what I had made/
to anybody else.
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161167
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My softness craves your weight. Give me your shape, and I won't resist it. Or, rather, I will but just enough to recall it. I can only give that much, and that's my fatal flaw. If I were a more pliable thing, I could let go of these impressions. The stains—coffee,…
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161141
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"Make a wish," she whispered.
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161193
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Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.
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16112216
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My mother used to say she'll be just like you and you‘ll deserve it. I was a Punk Rocker. A rebel. Emily worries about things like grades and sports. She's on the soccer team. I got stoned under the bleachers. Emily, is a good kid. …
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16101211
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"So, like the Goldilocks thing…"
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161054
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I would be reduced to begging on the streets and hoping for a sign of her in soup lines.
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16101312
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But by day the birds / of prey were in control.
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161011
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Ikkyu liked coming over especially at dinner. I'm a great cook and even though he no longer needed to eat himself, the idea of a sumptuous meal and a nice bottle of wine appealed to him. We'd commune about the poetry of karma flowers, seafood, and women, he in his robes and…
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1609119
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strumming on the pipe/blowing on the lute's body/drumming on the horn.
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16091315
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16091613
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This is self-reflection or self-reflexive writing. Candor but not verse. That is what I write: not-verse. On occasion I write a poem though rarely an occasional poem. Instead of calling it non-fiction we could call it non-verse.
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160975
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When they were seven, he’d taken them out to the desert and let them shoot a .38 at rusted cans. The explosions rocked them back on their heels.
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1609118
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often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/
we never had any children, he said ruefully/
that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/
robert, dying: creating silence
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160950
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I’m told it hurts. It hurts more than anyone ever thought it would. Every light in the room blinds you. Every sound in the room deafens you. The pain is excruciating as muscles and nerves that aren’t meant to work anymore are forced back to life i
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160886
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There was man from antiquity that sat next to me. His belief in the healing qualities of Aloe Vera so pronounced, that the house brimmed with such. He had no use for modernity in any of its forms but was fond of supermarkets. When in one he was overwhelmed with an…
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16083116
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Everyone is botching everything, even the rescue team. They can't get to me. I am surrounded by people who don't know a fatal wound when they see one. I am so determined to live that I become bossy.
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16082514
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Mama's good at finding things, but hardly ever what she's looking for.
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16082313
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We met an old friend and his old dog. We went off leash on the lush Buffalo grass. He and I—this old friend, I mean—talked mostly of divorce, something we shared between us.
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160873
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We walk in silence. We water our plants. We don’t eat as well as we should. We try to love. We try to forget.
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16072622
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After this last death, I lose at musical chairs. Rough strangers shove me toward the carved door. Feeling fierce, I yell, “Don't push me!” House racked with noise, smells, rushing, I turn the…
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16071616
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There's a mirror in front of me and I thought it was so I could see myself, but I didn't want to see me.
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16071510
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...skinny love, skinned and thinned weak broth love...
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160785
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Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
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160761
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At dinner in Marrakech, Namid danced on the table, waving a white napkin, propelled by jetlag and poor judgment.
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160760
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“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed.
“Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie.
"Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."
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1607133
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I am a 33 year old drag queen, and I frequently confuse my dreams with reality. Each morning, I awake to a research project: what has actually occurred, and what was a dream? Today I woke up believing I'd lost a pound, so I weighed myself, and I was right.…
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160772
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The screams and howls of other people's children set him on edge. But he struggled to stay cheerful. They had season passes, so the visits there cost nothing and it had consequently become a weekly tradition to go. The children had not, as far as he could
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160741
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I'm delighted to report that I've come up with my own school of thought. It's called, "Dress Like a Cat Until You Get What You Want."
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160676
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"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T
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