I called it posturing, the militant dreamlife I lived here alone with drinking and gratitude and dancing at night in the kitchen with my mother’s ghost.

I’d found their ad in the weekly. It looked perhaps slightly less suspicious than some other services I’d employed, though unfortunately that wasn’t saying much.

I looked at Mr. Armindaro’s son, the only other kid my age. He stood next to his father, holding a huge green watermelon over his head. The little hairs of his armpits. He yawned, so I yawned.

A ship. She’s hanged from the mast. She’s lying on the bed and I’m lying next to her, holding her hand. She talks as though nothing were out of the ordinary.

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we dressed / in our best / false breasts / to impress / our two guests

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For more years than were good for me, I worked as an editor and staff writer for an art magazine. My co-editor, Jennifer, had a valuable talent for finding humor in the dull routine tasks and professional anxieties that came with the job.

When I was young and very new to the world, my keeper took me to a place he referred to as the annex, though, since it was not proximate to any other structure, I had a hard time understanding what it meant for it to be called annex.

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Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

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if I had a god to pray to / it would be the light fixture / in the jail cell I spent most / of a day in.

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Poor sock monkey with the pompoms / chewed off—that was the one I kept, / working out a threadbare iconography / for the prayer card of my dreams.

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Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

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Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

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This would not be the first or last time for either of us. Nor was it my first time trying to reason through it, trying to rationalize the kind of violence that felt everywhere and always and hardly random.

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Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

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Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

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This essay on the work of Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle was the winner the 2019 Toni Beauchamp Prize for Critical Art Writing, judged by Jessica Lynne.

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2

Exclusively available in the print edition of Gulf Coast 32.2