With the right combination of numbers, a phone discharges .22 caliber rounds, and that’s enough to silence the witnesses. Bedposts fall under “less spy, more convenient” and can be wiped clean. …

I have a bird in my mouth. He can’t get out. His wings and head keep struggling. Everybody notices bulges in my cheeks and asks what’s wrong. Rfmmrmff I say. I can’t seem to open my mouth wide …

And because you’re not an antelope or a dog you think you can’t drop your other two limbs down and charge toward the Eternal Heart. But those are your legs too, the ones that have hauled your …

    –Ecrit par L’Automate de Maillardet     From the long view, the wetlands stun me—                 patches of long grass sway like dauphinesses lost in a troubadour’s …

How is it you can explain their living here with me, leaning On their cellos, doleful and plenty. In my single-person tax-bracket of one alive, there are more Living here with me not alive Than …

There are many unplanned ways to say goodbye: stealing away, making a show, lying drunk and intertwined in lawns. Against the washing machine in our friends’ sunroom, this may be the last time I …

I love you so much I want to bury my fist in your chest. Eleventeen. Nico Alvarado teaches middle school in Colorado.

You want to know what it was like? It was like my whole life had a fever. Whole acres of me were on fire. The sun talked dirty in my ear all night. I couldn’t drive past a wheatfield without doing …

If white noise meant any shade other than the stone dark of / a closed eye, you would / remember that a hammer can also build, a shoulder can also / hold, nightshade can wake, / you would remember …