we brush off our debts
with a heartfelt embrace,
mad tales from the other side,
and an honest smile that sends you back to the bar happy for another stolen round.
she bowed her head and turned it away
from where the flag had been raised
as the Soviet national anthem played
but when the Mini came to a stop
a metallic hand came down on her
left shoulder
made Gabriella face
her assailant,
gibberingI am all smoke and shifting seasons
crushed pack of American Spirits in my back pocket
we are weak-knee wasted
outside my apartment
vodka-veiled memories all I have of that night
Writing is seen as a form of silence
so everything is read aloud,
traffic signs, shopfronts, TV and radio
are talked over the top of all the time.
There was a room for people unable to feel. Inside were captions cut away from their pictures. One task of the day was to find the picture that went along with the caption. When the teacher came into the room wearing his apron of severed heads several people unable to feel cried out for the first time. But it was faux disgust.
Because illness was honing in like a scraggly coyote.
We became still, one within the other folded like leaf within leaf.
And we took strength from mere light, mere water, mere melodies
chanted in quiet devotion as the first star laughed over the dogwood.
I am the guestbook pages
hundreds of people, with a single name
and many languages, sign.
Elegies chase after me.
Carrying off
another meal, one that
loved, his or her bloodied feathers
I haven’t seen me
I know that if I cut him off permanently he’d just get it somewhere else and do it in private, alone and somehow that feels crueler to me than my being the supplier if that makes any sense, and I know the Hutts still wanna run me out of business but I pay em protection money every month and it’s stupid but there’s people like Ben who need a place like mine
They said maybe our relationship could have lasted
if I had been a better cook.
And I thought to myself and then said
out loud
I would have been sane longer
had he had a mechanical cock.
Nonsaleable Nathan’s hot dog buns
Nonsaleable Nestea sweet tea
Nonsaleable Nestea unsweet tea
Nonsaleable popcorn seed
Nonsaleable pretzel salt
Nonsaleable salt packets
His language compartmentalized into
words, “drink, eat, death, monster…”
He laughed, quenched his thirsty throat
swigging unfairness into his gut
It's all gravy, for real here
in the wee hours where
dark dolls flourish and
madmen drool eating their own poems.
Belief entered into as if
it were the back seat
of a taxi. “Just drive”
she said, & used her glasses
to push the hair back
To be healthy, too, reading booklike things and the feel of fishnet stockings and the swirl of a martini or two and a dirty smoke to boot. Dancing. Dancing for sure and plenty of drinks for two.
We begin with laughter
Get here, bruh, intoxicated, bruh
Two drinks & now you buggin', bruh
You can't guzzle this bittersweet liquor,
You're swayin' bruh, I'm just sayin', bruh
Who were the forgotten first to be kind or to recognize
mindfulness in eyes? When forests guarded the fine-tune
fingertip touch, they promoted overflow communications
between disparate species with mint conditions operating
in the back-roar, in breath without trying, in the classical
days before medical birth.
It’s a visual metaphor for an emotion
that, yes, doesn’t exist for you
But metaphors are better than
nothing for softening your steel
The first thing we noticed about the rocketship perched on the roof of Hogan’s Bar & Grill was its small size, like a VW bus decked out in alien peace symbols, webbed in light, rocking as if at sea.
This was the year Russian hackers
stole everything including our will
to live: fire sale for heart-shaped
boxes and personal ambitions on
the deep web, bitcoin only please.
“I don’t care about your miserable shit life!”
A punch in the arm to me and she was spinning,
eyes flashing, body flouncing, door slammin’
pure D love a pass/fail stompin’ up the stairs,
a topic they’re naive in. a society
misperceived. my complexity thieved
of its difficulty. no one said love.
where a series of confused earthquakes makes for a new error of Holy Roman roadway. Or to
make a fairer era get off the road, hey, and let’s get some crab soup on this rainy day
stretching to halt these DTs like we gotta throttle the weather how we want it to be how
The lining on Mr. Chepman's blue Upper Valley Cab Co. jacket looks like the interior of his car and he is driving it two buildings over to pick up Mrs. Plarst for her dialysis ride. She hates him because he plays Motown Mornings on Oldies WLLZ, and he hates her because he has to fold up her walker and put it in his trunk.
Must have at least (45) forty-five Concessions.
some Educational Shows, a good Plantation
show and not more than two gypsies.
That boy said it’s all monkey talk listen he said. I wasn’t to listen but Jake’s door was open because I was to. It’s what you do he said, how the thing is done is nothing but whispering in the library, the boy said you won’t. I’m not approved of Jake and you won’t stand up but that’s not how things are done is it Jake what am I supposed to do then?
[ATC Supervisor:] Ask them if they want to report officially.
[ATC:] TWA 517, do you want to report a UFO? Over.
[TWA Pilot:] Negative. We don’t want to report.
[ATC:] AirEast 31, do you wish to report a UFO? Over.
[AirEast Pilot:] Negative. We don’t want to report one of those, either.
It hurts you to talk about it
but it hurts you more to not talk about it
or
is that therapy gibberish?
I’ve got something you can defund,
right here. There is a hot sun,
just the other side of the clouds.
choking down entire argument in record time
continuing calculations are getting far closer
to where i want to be than where i need to be
unhealthy eroticism is in sensitivity training
so that it won't be instantaneously spooked
pouting, making a hand gesture. furrowed. a photo of a sheet of ice. having there at various monitoring points. reddish dust, uncomfortable. the foam springs. compensation for a more dignified life. exploration sufficed dropped into water. involuntary moan so.
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