Now the house is empty of romance except a potted flowering plant from my mother for Valentine's Day. No man has set foot in my museum since I moved here. One man has set foot. The owner's brother to see about the gasket under the toilet. The Comcast installers, twice. The…

Fertile bodies eye/ the space you occupy,/ impatient for disappearance.

Do not spank the truth Whatever else you do You do not ever Spank the truth If you let the truth be spanked You will be diminished And it will never let you Be finished, instead When you are dead You will dangle in the land Between

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. All was confusion in the Lubrecht house. Baby Lubrecht had discovered that his favorite blankey, thought by him to have been lost, was in fact being used by his older sister, Lilly Lubrecht.…

There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

as you are, there's a big floating arm that separates both of us from each other. Widening, like a river, it touches us together often, but still keeps us drifting apart. The banks of your new life have different weeds and flowers…

From nine at night until five in the morningthe mannequins staff the Dream Shop.Customers sleepwalk in and murmur their enquiries.Some of the patrons are very demanding.They queue outside before opening…

I listen to my psychotherapy patients complain about their lives all day. Bitterly, hopelessly. I listen for little openings that offer possibilities for changing perspective and feeling weller. But my five minutes between each session, whether it includes a bathroom or…

Who puts Vaseline on the forefinger of Lenin? I want to know

there should be a word for it.

I hate walking into restaurants and cafes by myself to meet someone. I always feel awkward, as if no one will claim me. I'm hanging on the threshold now for an agonizing few moments scanning the room until I see my friend.“Hi!” she says, waving her cup at…

There is an empty space, between every note in rock 'n' roll, where they have buried John Bonham,

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. What on Earth does that mean? What the hell? Earth, hell, heaven, they were good concepts. He took a rib out of Adam and began to write with it.

She sang will you still need me

Inspired by my last writers' workshop, where encouragement is key.