One time Clay and Rob at the rental shop didn’t make me pay the late fee on some cross country skis and they said maybe instead you could bring us some cookies ...
“‘Everyone dies one day. Everyone. Even wolves. But not books. Not words. Words don’t die.’
--my son, 3, who is a lot smarter than I am”
“Oh fuck off Rebecca ...
I dropped a white rabbit emoji
at the hypnotist’s feet. He asked,
Why rabbits? Days passed. I sent
more rabbits. Why on my mind,
loud Debussy, sunset, a sip...
Her hair was a cascading wave I thought I could climb.
The way she threw her head back with laughter
those strands enveloped her.
It was her hands, though
s...
Her dream house doesn’t have a number.
Just write 123.
Put the letter in the pink plastic mailbox.
She doesn’t open her door for anyone anymore.
Not even th...
My new friend with the soft face and fluffy Afro sat next to me in French class.
We were both nerds, bonded chatting about Elizabethan England,
Did you know...
The sky is vomit green, like the apocalypse is coming, like I’m eight and staring out the doors of the save-u-more in Alaska while my mom shops for groceries in...
I’m wondering which body of water
you’ve bog-bodied your beauty
into some tawdry taxidermy
while I wait for mothballs and
murderous hues of blue staring a...
(after the sea shanty 'the eddystone light')
dad was a lighthouse keeper,
mum was a sort of octopus mermaid.
chat magazine called us the octo-tuplets
even t...
I swear there’s a body in the lake. Bobbing. Somewhere. I’ve gone to the pier once a week every week for years, trying to find it again. I bring out binoculars....
A child's version of wisdom
sits alone on the edge
of years of dingy decisions.
Moments patterned in plaid
like a dirty old shirt that screams maturity
los...
Happiness hinges on hips that twist
into Calvin Klein jeans, size zero.
Strutting like a fevered Saturday night,
we prance past boys, chins cocked
over ...
Squinting at my computer screen
while the light fades
in my apartment.
Through the open window
howls headache traffic,
and I think,
every single one
of...
In the white and unglamorous small box slipping off the screen,
the new texture of our days beams onto us
like silk screen. The next taut hour is stretched ov...
It’s been twenty years since you kissed
Madonna at the VMA’s.
And I saw on TikTok that you did it again
at your wedding last June.
(But maybe that was deep ...
is this an appropriate
time to go full panic
attack mode
or is it not the vibe
i’m looking out
the window like I
always do
Ethel Cain was our Florida g...
My mother tells me to stop
stalling, every second a lost epiphany.
I wonder if she sees
girl eating time
or time eating girl.
Sometime in the last millio...
the moth dries on the spot, the spot marked here, abstractions were wet with viscera even when you drew a line through and through the essay, experience is kill...
The one on the bypass back home
where we had countless birthday parties
in the playroom with the plastic tunnels and slides
leading to the mesh-encased ball ...
Dads shoulders were the top of the neon world
Cotton candy ice cream dripping down my arms
Vivid blue and vibrant pink stains all over my body
Losing my teet...
I saw someone in the airport that looked like you.
Maybe it was because I just put my glasses on. Maybe it was because it was six in the morning.
Maybe if I s...
where Tim and Wendy White haven’t cut their hair
in seventeen years & Tim is a bass player in a never found
fame band & Wendy struggles with her 1989 ...
A pliable cancer
blithely swept across faces
of noblewomen
smearing ignorant flesh
with stark virginity;
painting untruths
with wide brushstrokes
of stee...
1977 and we four were all twenties
in that Pittsburgh dining room: my first wife,
our actress friend who vaulted a path to Broadway,
the friend’s friend, and...
When gospel was found
in glossy pages of magazines
I pored over, lemon juice soaking
my hair, I was first learning how
to be somebody I was not.
“Baby On...
This morning the sky hung with feathered syntax
composed on wires.
I discovered abstract expressionist crows had Pollocked
the hood of my Prius.
A stude...
Your post-it notes are endearing. When I say they’re stupid they’re actually not.
Your beard could use a trim. Actually, that’s me being nice. I hate it. Ple...