“and when the debt collector calls

tells me to pay up I am covered

head to toe in lavender, sunbathing on the deck

sucking hard on a pressed green juice…”

“With fingertips, I peel off the skin, then debone soft salmon flesh

the hue of autumn leaves, the late afternoon sky. “

no matter why

or if, or in what way, what

I want to say is

“is wrong is a guy thing is a radical notion in the Czech Republic is the future”

“I thought they were rocks, but they’re turtles, moving slowly over one another to sun. Stretching out their gray necks. There’s a man behind me saying, ‘did you get one of these?’ to passersby and holding out a pamphlet titled Are You a Good Person?”

“My uncle drinks, my mother worries. They put me in the middle, use me as a topicof conversation when things get dull. They send me letters and out-of-print copies of their favorite books with thoughtful inscriptions.”

“So she tried to chalk the hairs up to the Philz Coffee barista that he raved about at the new location near his office. But Kristy couldn’t stop seeing Carrie Bradshaw as the barista.”

“worms inch

his nostrils and build

homes eggs hatch behind

glass eyes mother tells

me to pull the meat

off the bones it’ll

freeze well i puke”

“You decided at the age of nine when your mom left your dad in Chicago and moved back in with her parents in Hawaii, giving you a dozen chicks in his place, that if you couldn’t do this you had no business eating meat, or raising animals, and should probably leave the island altogether.”

“Since you’ve gone, I’ve watched rerun clips / of SNL, Norm McDonald as Burt Reynolds on Jeopardy, /young Will Ferrell bland as Trebek—I laughed, maybe”

“We didn’t always have to drive thirteen hours for a peach, but the third year After the People Disappeared, a brutal winter killed the peach trees in southern Michigan. This would be our last peach pilgrimage. “

“I’ll whisper the end of the love story I started / in 1993 and you can tell me about heaven”

“After watching Black Panther 2 / the man next to me sobs / each inhale heavy”