The barber pops a pill,
sharpens his razor.
Lillian fills a glass bowl
with pebbles, listens
for scratching in the walls.
I don’t want distractions, a woman thought one day, I want to pay attention to one thing.
If you do that, came a countering voice in her head, you will be noticed, and noticed for the wrong reasons. The world is
Read Moreall you said was good cooking beautiful all you ate
the beans shaped like pearls & the pineapple sliced
1 Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
1 Be it a naked leg a slow oar of dust taut over
2 Section 1. Intent
2 a canyon tent
Read MoreNaturally, I was an herbivore, one of the gentle giants with four or more hearts and a placid expression I carried even to the end.
Read MoreThat the insipid rain keeps falling.
That no room fills with light the same way twice.
That sin glistens like oil in a shallow dish.
I’m no good at talking to people
but I’m even worse talking to animals.
Shoulders slung high & tight, collarbone snared
between neck & arm, you rock back, hot snare
popped before the bass, & sing. What god snared
After floating from dive bar to dive bar
a windblown hamburger wrapper
Tom rests finally
in a graveyard on the outskirts of Seattle
1.
Dear Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”: Congratulations on being named the 56th-best rock song of all time. I’m super excited for you!
The doctor tells us that I need
to learn how to cut into
my own skin
I believe in a thing called war—
Huh. Yeah. What is every morning?
Some say play dead, some say tourniquet.
I say childhood. Remember lying so still beneath the tree you chose, the birds came back?
Wondering whether you’d be forgotten?
We’d say I love you, but not
in a gay way. High school
boys, we’d only touch
Your desire is a boat and I know it. Curvature of wood and the tense sides of solid to water. It seems simple: you set out, you take a boat. But, the floating, oh, it’s magic. Gliding, like the wail of a voice.
Read MoreThe four ugliest children in Christendom do not
date, eat in public, gossip, talk on the phone, hang-out.
They breathe with their mouths open, wheezing