thirsty goldminers
nourishing on 
mercury-filled water

sweet tooth fills 
with gold amalgam

read this article

In the beginning,
all my little poems
were suicide notes.
Five thousand pages,
one long suicide note.

read this article

They fly into the sea
like a ghost's imagination
and its bewildered dream.
Upon the shore for a brief time
their songs echo, skip

read this article

Poetry workshops
trauma and abuse
A room of fourteen teens
about to age out of foster care

read this article

It is evening all afternoon. Winter all spring and summer. There are nights when Mr. Mallard looks up from his desk and swears he sees the shadow of his missing wife brush to and fro before the panes.

read this article

None of this may make the slightest difference
in how the earth and the sun and universe revolve.
But we are human and addicted to action,
​the probable less attractive than the possible.

read this article

for I know this world will break her too
the way it broke me, the way it broke my ancestors, so I have to 
​help her long before she begins believing she's irreparable like pearls that know they can never go back to their celestial shells

read this article

Also, one of the dangers of reading
is when it’s cold and people need heat
you will get into trouble for reading
anything earmarked for fuel.

read this article

         Whispering scissors.
   One skeletal
 raconteur breeds
     a wooden mood. Metallic puddles

read this article

read this article

A toxic hue fans out across the globe,
infecting the hills and herds of people,
the various populous, causing pangs 
of endless delusion to rage
across the spacetime 
​of a planet already faltering. 

read this article

This old blood. Old-fashioned in its
primary colors. Then shaved ice
came along in digital billboards
of blue raspberry; and we softened
on progress, and our teeth ached

read this article

We’re the ones that remember words like buggery
and deviant, fairy and fudge packer and pansy
 
Words we traded and collected
​like bubble gum cards.

read this article

Another august handful of peace explodes
in a minister’s hand as a ritual of freedom
while the battalion of nation’s pride marches

read this article

you can tear down a house
but its crumbled soul will infest what’s built upon
cross-bred into apartments and inconsistent utilities
​the rain curious about where it’s never been

read this article

germ gentrification
                        moves in hard,
black air for black lungs,
black water for black thirst
black plague for black neighborhoods

read this article

Provided they came 
in fancy wrapping, the 
German intellectual 
of the interwar years
could perceive utility 

read this article

the sun drives the weary away deliverance from absolute forgiveness into the madness of the mind surely I am already born a man on this Earth so how is it possible that I have never gone mad?

read this article

greed
of the candidates
I cannot name

masses in the country
​a homeless camp

read this article

Snipers in the bushes of other people's eyelashes
A premature engagement ring on a severed finger of a severed hand
​And everywhere there are faces faces faces

read this article

After linking the dominance of the world’s
shallow thinking to the arrogance of living in the present,
declaring the past irrelevant, and labeling the future
as taking care of itself, it is refreshing and comforting
​to see someone complain that the world is unlovable

read this article

it makes me want to dance
and sing!
the way the comedian
tells the joke!
​and everyone laughs and laughs

read this article

We were too late for God. Roots like fingers gripping white buckling sky. This summer it is order that cramps the ancient wheat, crows that slash with departure air thick with the annihilation of love.

read this article

How terribly strange to be impregnated 
by an uncle, a father, a neighbor,
a teacher, a doctor.
Remaining silent at 17, 
carrying the attack,

read this article

he sprayed weed killer
on your roses.
It was to prove a theory –
chemicals don’t discriminate.

read this article

The rest of this story has to be in someone else’s hand. I’m not brave enough to write out all this sadness. This story has to be turned away from any beautiful dread, from any sexy alarm, from excuses, from the biochemical shell game.

read this article

bloody hurricane to surgical
            light     psalm for this scalpel
gutting from cutis
nerve from fascia

read this article

He loved the film
about the writer that
didn't write anymore,
just drank to excess
every day. He had
given up writing for
​the bottle as well.

read this article

I do remember a huge
bird dancing on the crown of my head
when I couldn’t tell air from water.
By the way,
did you know that the stars are rootless

read this article

             dried seaweed
             the happiness 
             of accidents

read this article

As their ranks dwindled a pile grew, and he sat vigil upon its promontory cross-legged like a yogi, assured those who’d successfully escaped his clutches would not send aid for them cornered remaining.

read this article

One woman obsessively checked herself in the mirror for worrying signs that she was developing an archaic hour-glass figure. When I opened my mouth to speak, it was like I had raised the lid of a music box.

read this article

Nobody knows where they were
any such day, night, or why. I summon the high
literature of motiveless malignity.
Six succulent
cheap thrills on a doily, rearranged.

read this article

Because as child after child falls into the world, someone has to catch them, wrap them up in donkey skin, and coax them into the feverish ballroom that only opens its doors once in every lifetime.

read this article

Now, 20 years later, boots and scars remain.
Officers, official allegations. The
Oval Office, a space ___ miles from on the ground operations.
Orders incite disorder.

read this article

it’s tree time!
I am without
 
the sporting news

​on the final earth

read this article

pOd
uPoN
pOd
of sink dwellers pondering
the mighty zoot suit scuba diving
                     machine guns

read this article

read this article

Pages