“Black varnish, marble & brass. We left California on October 1st & are now in Rosarito.”

“It all went to hell when the goats came out corkscrewed

     and killed their mother. Those kids had to be fed wheat

through the chicken-wire pen.”

“I didn’t know her, so I asked her to marry me. I did this many times.”

“Cleaver me. Leave it to Beaver me.

Beneath all of Ward's shark suits lives”

“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”

“An acerbic alchemy of PBR and hormones

bubble up inside my mouth,

crammed in a theater showing My Bloody Valentine.

Drizzled spit and splatter campfire, bad decisions”

“His pigment box rattled. / His brushes bristled / in the morning sun. / Rain had come & gone.”

Are your friends writers as well? (is poetry all you talk about?) / Define friendship (my IG friends are closer to me than God)

“My grandma calls it / your bloom. Once I saw a used pad / on the bathroom floor, and the stain / did kind of look like a flower.

“I am reminded one morning in montparnasse cemetery / searching for markers in the fog with my new family”

“…you think about how the prettiest girl in your Catholic middle school / compared the bodies of girls who touched the bodies of boys to the body of Bathsheba.”

“ Like the sun, God / follows him home. Like the moon, he never marries. Chooses to adopt. / His father calls with bad news. The phone a brick in his hand.”

“I have a dream where I let someone in; I allow him to trace my lips with his tongue, salvage my exposed flesh, offering up my throat, my cheek, every vulnerable square inch my body possesses.

“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”

“one line or two from poem. / use space slash space to indicate line breaks

“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”

“Close ups of the court, / our sneakers against the asphalt, / your fingertips stagnant.”

“We are sharing the big bathtub / of life, tan toes and blonde hair / snaking down the drain, pulling / at the pipework.”