When his wife left him, a friend told him that resentments were like canceled checks. You weren't going to get your money back.

the constant inner jabber

When her husband left she was not yet thirty

I should have known to wear boots on Teddy’s motorcycle, but I didn’t know that when the engine heated the exhaust pipe became hot as a griddle. Teddy didn’t warn me, and I thought there was something wrong with that, but I let it go the way I jumped on h

I wanna make banana peel poems-- slippery little booby traps

You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

One of the drunk men, a dear friend, hunk, as he updated me, now living the existence of a poet, called from San Francisco to say he would take the plane to Minneapolis, do it, then leave me to raise the baby.

Maybe tonight, maybe next week,/ maybe only in my waking dreams,/ I’ll teach another lesson-

Christine comes back from the future looking tired, which is the opposite of what I expected. For some reason, I imagined the future as being invigorating. But she walks into the apartment and abandons her suitcase by the front door, collapses into a heap on the couch next…

Wake up, stretch. Check the curtained windows for sunlight or that dreaded grey frame that forces the covers to come back up and the alarm clock to be set to ‘Snooze’.

I want youto remember me. This the placewhere I'll always be, if you're looking hard enough.This is the place I've letgo of all expectations, no regrets, and nomasks. This the place my heartbobbs about like a…

the / future is now incomplete

They discovered the baby in the grass, under the snapping cotton sheets.

but all I can give them now are air hugs

Fax me back to South Street listening to the dumpster / trumpeter, standing like licorice in the rain, / as the fetid officers assemble for the raid