The plastic surgeon, a short, blond-gray mustachioed man comes in to tell me he’s headed to the OR and will see me in there. He taps the rail of my bed twice, a gesture I take as doctorly …
One afternoon of his every-other-Saturdays, my dad took the crossbow gingerly, respectfully from its box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet and led us out onto the apartment’s second-story back …
Jacob opened up an entirely new door for us. After that, we often spoke to the camera directly, to our therapist, when it felt like speaking to each other was getting us nowhere. I loved how …
Mother and the children had never killed before. That was Father’s work. All month long the rain came down, and gray-faced Father coughed in his bed, shrinking into a yellowed quilt. Mother and the …
The first skin I tattooed was orange peel. Supposedly the texture is similar to humans. I bought a kilo of oranges to practice on before you agreed. You came down for the weekend, watched as I tested …
I’m very good at these stories. The bitter-sweet, could-have-been, wish-it-was-so ones that are prettier and more precious than happy-endings. Stories are better cut short, end before it begins, so …
It happened in a matter of seconds, this overlay of violence in my mind, that took us into another life, and then it was gone. Perhaps what I wanted was to have my future thrust upon me. No, I …
Everything / is for sale. A blue-eyed boy / knocks his head against my hip, / reaches for the Styrofoam form / I hold in my hand. A halo or a hat, / I say and put it on his head, / watch it fall …
How long will I last before ruining this? / Escaping the heat that teethes from your chest / like barbed wire with little dogs in it. / Mess of your face cracked from sweat.
Long before Tara met Eggs, she shelled out her funds / to get spat on in the woods, fed ipecac, and peyote. / From her perspective, the way out of cessation and substance / is through, so when the …
It begins with a host (an immigration) of spirits clobbering / intestines. Think: “Longing as attention seeking,” or “attention / people, we are starting the show.” I will pay in tennis …
The Adriatic Highway, a ligament that holds the tectonic states together / A transparent field of magnetic vessels swaddling a crumbling desert / nosing the star-map a clan of deer migrate West / …
Today I’m learning satin’s splendor, a tight ribbon-wristed free- / Dom orbiting my pulse. What is it that you want, love? To be tied / Is a [hypo]thesis on trust: not if pain should find me, but …
How to enter my own waking so that I might feel alive. I often want / to lay down in the snow now. To be a little numb, at first, / as I’ve been since I gave birth & my bones became trestles / …
i am hair and beard, / tea and rage i am in this world / sadness, diffidence, selfishness i am / still in this world. / minus two, twenty-seven / why doesn’t the world resemble me
you see the trees / you know there are trees / you speak the word of trees / in a colonial language, aloud, to yourself
something remains of our being / braided flesh and muscle / or we’re chilled / bags for bone.
a man covers his face with a rag / on video capture at five in the afternoon, / a woman cuts a round into a saguaro / on video capture at five in the afternoon, / a girl twists her ankle on a rock / …
The agent does not call an ambulance. / The agent does not wake the sleeping mother. // The agent does not file a report. The agent’s code reads: / No report is required unless a domestic threat is …
With the swivel of a controller / an agent in a room of laced / concrete blocks is haunted / by bovine hitting their bulk // against steel bollards.