A contoured villanelle using “Teacher” by Elizabeth Alexander
When you don’t answer, I swear then count to ten,
remind myself I’m not a teen, no driving by to...
At the bus stop, the kid beside me hides death,
like a wolf in silk, he shoots me a sly grin.
I toss him a gentle smile and a quick nod,
let him know we’re c...
At fourteen, acutely and newly voiceless
I became preoccupied with the basking shark.
From an animal family typecast as
vicious and soulless and yet itself...
Rainy Nights & Pillow Fights: The road trip we took upstate when you spilled coffee on my sneakers…that was one of the last messes we made that we could blo...
Pizza Pies
When your whole
life is set on fire,
10-year plan tossed
around like an off-
brand soda can,
it’s nice to break your
diet and pick up
a pizza...
I.
I gave myself away because I wasn’t my father’s to give.
My bone tulle train snagged on the splintered steps descending from the sweeping veranda of ...
In the first photograph, I stood opinionless: like a ballpoint waiting for an instruction to scratch the
bare chest of a parchment. Fazed by a magenta shadin...
How a squandered moment sets its anchor
to the shole of memory. Shallow sunk
jetsam wriggles loose—washes upon shore
and by some accident equally dumb
and j...
All the gifts seem to have been distributed.
The excitement passed like a rain cloud, blown away by
Summer wind. It's a long way off, I'm counting the li...
I think I’ve loved him since the day
my soul burst into existence
But as for this lifetime,
I had no big epiphany.
All the fairy tales and silver screens
...
Three Days of the Condor
The condor’s collar is up.
Cold war winds sweep the city streets.
Christmas is here and all America
wants under the tree is cheap...
hollower than an engine
or whittled upstart fiction
a geyser is a fissure
a flame
a wasting fluid
cruder than an ordering
an orphan want, an early stain...
& two weeks ago the sky was all purple
& I thought of quoting the Prince song
as I posted the pic on my Instagram story
but I settled on:
I didn’t h...
When I kneel
and take the body
it’s in the form of
free samples of
Dior no 37
swiped across the mouth
pretend it’s someone else’s thumb.
I am never going...
That vomitus vortex
In the hollow ass-end of depression
Begins to resemble forever
All events –
Like a scarecrow slow dancing
With a mop
Pain beyond...
My dear, today I'm thinking about fidelity in a non-trivial way,
And I realise that I've been unfaithful to you for a very long time,
Maybe since the begi...
Lynch is sitting on the redwood porch of my parents’ house, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the cops to show up. It’s been a long night—the kind of night littl...
last October you wanted to visit that haunted house they set up in the park
I was afraid but really I’m more frightened by loneliness or abandonment
than thea...
in the future there are tickets
to failure buy one see me forget
my little brother's graduation
watch your cat miscalculate
cabinet height or vase breakabil...
The Insomniac's Guide to the Stars,
its numberless blank spaces
and the smear of gravity
for those who don't like reading.
A vast assortment of corners
whe...
I think there are some astronauts
standing on my windowpane?
It looks like their spaceship landed
in my air conditioner, and it seems
they are barely the si...
Sometimes, I can’t see it, what some call freedom. I
can taste it, condensed milk, a can opener, my pinkie
circles the rim of the mouth, Lady Fingers, plump,
...
someone can have a playlist called grocery
store tulips & get my entire world i want
to lounge in my underwear & do absolutely
nothing in a hotel roo...
According to Lacey, the moon’s a paper donkey
on which humanity pins its desires & we’d buckle
under longing if it didn’t bear the weight.
These last two...
At the end of apex species's folly,
there ticks a celestial clock
that senses a planet burning
***
The sun turns blue
from the core
like a godeye open...
years ago on a basement tv
at a birthday party, western themed
six girls gathered around a cellophane fire
to sing and watch that
movie that scared me s...
