Poetry

Your brother can go to hellfor the hell of it and have no choicebut a motel on Route 6north of Scranton, the wax paper bagslined up on the king-size bed.Forget coal, the damned until doomedand fallow shaftsin strike songs about strong men, this is nowthe abysmal substance,not a miner but a moonlightingIHOP waiter the underworld …

Let’s give ourselves license to pulleach other’s cords. I bet, like dolls,we would spit the same lines fromthe same movie. As if the script’s beenetched into our bones. Let’s not denyour connective tissue. Let’s be infusedwith the glee of a mob beelining fora one-day sale. Yes, and let’s refusemiscellaneous tax. Let’s swap curves,celebrating our common …

It’s a barred galaxy feeling no pain.It’s a spark caught up in a high wind howl,the soft, silent arc of a thrown in towel.It’s the last spring snowflake circling the drainor a new shooting star with deadeye aim.It’s a comet dragged by an undertow,a lost bumbershoot flying out of frame,an age-old nova in the here …

I like trees that shed: sycamores, aspens. I like the shagof the Shagbark Hickory. I prefer my river in the RiverBirch, my paper in the Paper Birch. And the stagof a staghorn fern & the lantern of a lanternfly? Yes.The seeds of my mother’s ashes are thrashedby brown thrashers. I grieve her swallowtails, also cattailswindblown …

over a mediocre beat, & nobody bothers to ask who “she” is, or if shemade it home safe that night. I can’t help but wonder how many horror storiesI’ve bopped to. How many truths I’ve assumed to be fiction, thinkingWho would be fool enough to make public knowledge of their private sins?When Bobby Shmurda got …

Because the snack bar serves friedbologna & the cocktail loungepours pinot grigio from the can& if Jeffrey “The Dude”Lebowski lived in Ohiothis would be HIS PLACE.Outside these doors they callyou Rosie or Bobby. Hereyour name is Crusher. TheHammer. BOOYAH! Youare part of a roster—a teamof Magic 8 Balls & BowlingBabes, Gutter Guards &That’s How We …

for long i couldn’t figure out the meaning of words, their judgment, how to be precise, like an assignment in fifth grade on cardboard, precisely acceptable and precisely insufferable, or what to say to be through—a study of motives, a look without breaking eye contact with the tool that will hurt me. i’ve since taken …

the start. the crossing of borders. the migrants in migrant clothing—dilapidated walls roofed by the sight of overlords. the destination a sewage with salary.the excavated back of a dream. the myths where we are always stealing something.the danger sign in our rubiginous faces. the preference for tall and white. the eyes who look at us …