We had been friends since I was 14 and he was 12. We dated for a period in our early twenties. We caught up with each other again and again over the years. He was one of my favorite people.
Issue Forty-Seven
Going Under
I take a moonful of sea water / into my pale ribbon lungs / ever entangled / helpless satin / I have glimpsed this you know
Karen’s Features
The feature of Karen’s that gave her the most trouble (perhaps “feature” isn’t the right word) was her bladder, which was badly scarred.
What is the Recipe for Joy?
But you can’t start there. You must start with something small and easier to manage, like melancholy.
Summer
Love, your speech is sewered / with the same pilgrim buckle wheat / that canes the distant hills,
The Tilt-a-Whirl Knows My Name
Ferris wheel turning. Slow. Too slow. Lights twitch on like startled eyes.
A Normal Kid
Emmie, my nine year old daughter, knows how to hotwire a Kia.
When We Were Rabbit
We prefer being rabbit to being girls. When we’re rabbit, we can do anything.
Cut
Six of us are at Rose’s house, girlfriends of sixty-five years, the catalyst of the meeting being that Adonica and her husband, Andy, accumulated enough reward points to stay in a nearby Holiday Inn.
Estranged
I hope you get help. My sister texted this every time I reminded her that we were estranged.
Best Words, Best Order
Unlike Sonny, I was never mean for the business. If you work for one too long, they start to wonder what’s wrong with you
The Dead Woman is Playing the Violin
with her eyes closed in passionate concentration. Black hair pulled back.
Clack Clack Thump
Most mowers these days top out at ten miles per hour, but I gutted the governor and slashed the safety switch, so this one purred all the way up to fifteen, no sweat.
If your hometown is HURT
And you are a child wanting so bad to grow up, get out, and strike your own match, and all you can think about is those women at the drug store, a cluster of them, whose hometown is GOSSIP, how they nudge each other when you walk in, and you are just there to buy the cigarettes your mother sent you to get.
Stolen Rainbows
My mom says they stole my rainbows. Claire white-knuckles the book with her name stamped across it in gold just below the words Holy Bible, but solidly above a slightly off-kilter I <3 Jesus!
Human Man
My boyfriend is a nice man, but I know that I would like him better if he was a stingray.
Independence Day
I open the coffee shop on the fourth for double pay. All of my coworkers said it wasn’t worth it, but that’s a lesson I would need to learn for myself.
Why Girls Coming of Age in the 80s Never Learned to Speak Up
The golden age of slasher films and daytime soaps. The crochet and ashtray decade.
Describe Your Armor
This armor is keeping busy. This armor is talking to a therapist once a week.
In Conversation With the Adaption Predator Wikipedia Page
Avoid detection / Scrub batter from a blue bowl & wash it down the drain. Stare into. The sink’s twisted face.
Burning Bush
Knot your neckties. Thick as the bishop’s handshake. The smell of starch starching the air.
It’s Your Own Fault
If you’ve ever been one of those daughters refusing / to sleep with your feet dangling from the bed, choosing
Overnight They Morph
Sometimes the apartment building stairs turn into a luge track, designed for speed, enabling a drunk man to fly right out through the window next to the main door.
Cool Heads
Swimming can tadpole your thoughts—slipping, bumping, pulling one another under.
A Recipe For Surviving High-school (Gay Edition)
Go to school with confidence in your outfits. Never feel like you have to be more “masculine” or like the other guys.
how to survive a ghost infestation
you were a ghost last halloween, / bed sheets with torn edges, crooked virgin mary
Monochromatic
“You have a very good gray going on.” That’s what my teacher at the YMCA, Mr. Newton, told me in my “Painting the Human Form” art class yesterday after taking a cursory glance at my work. “Going on” is the way he ends all his observations of my classmate’s paintings:...
All the Re-Words
We had been friends since I was 14 and he was 12. We dated for a period in our early twenties. We caught up with each other again and again over the years. He was one of my favorite people.
Going Under
I take a moonful of sea water / into my pale ribbon lungs / ever entangled / helpless satin / I have glimpsed this you know
Karen’s Features
The feature of Karen’s that gave her the most trouble (perhaps “feature” isn’t the right word) was her bladder, which was badly scarred.
What is the Recipe for Joy?
But you can’t start there. You must start with something small and easier to manage, like melancholy.
Summer
Love, your speech is sewered / with the same pilgrim buckle wheat / that canes the distant hills,
The Tilt-a-Whirl Knows My Name
Ferris wheel turning. Slow. Too slow. Lights twitch on like startled eyes.
A Normal Kid
Emmie, my nine year old daughter, knows how to hotwire a Kia.
When We Were Rabbit
We prefer being rabbit to being girls. When we’re rabbit, we can do anything.
Cut
Six of us are at Rose’s house, girlfriends of sixty-five years, the catalyst of the meeting being that Adonica and her husband, Andy, accumulated enough reward points to stay in a nearby Holiday Inn.
Estranged
I hope you get help. My sister texted this every time I reminded her that we were estranged.
Best Words, Best Order
Unlike Sonny, I was never mean for the business. If you work for one too long, they start to wonder what’s wrong with you
The Dead Woman is Playing the Violin
with her eyes closed in passionate concentration. Black hair pulled back.
Clack Clack Thump
Most mowers these days top out at ten miles per hour, but I gutted the governor and slashed the safety switch, so this one purred all the way up to fifteen, no sweat.
If your hometown is HURT
And you are a child wanting so bad to grow up, get out, and strike your own match, and all you can think about is those women at the drug store, a cluster of them, whose hometown is GOSSIP, how they nudge each other when you walk in, and you are just there to buy the cigarettes your mother sent you to get.
Stolen Rainbows
My mom says they stole my rainbows. Claire white-knuckles the book with her name stamped across it in gold just below the words Holy Bible, but solidly above a slightly off-kilter I <3 Jesus!
Human Man
My boyfriend is a nice man, but I know that I would like him better if he was a stingray.
Independence Day
I open the coffee shop on the fourth for double pay. All of my coworkers said it wasn’t worth it, but that’s a lesson I would need to learn for myself.
Why Girls Coming of Age in the 80s Never Learned to Speak Up
The golden age of slasher films and daytime soaps. The crochet and ashtray decade.
Describe Your Armor
This armor is keeping busy. This armor is talking to a therapist once a week.
In Conversation With the Adaption Predator Wikipedia Page
Avoid detection / Scrub batter from a blue bowl & wash it down the drain. Stare into. The sink’s twisted face.
Burning Bush
Knot your neckties. Thick as the bishop’s handshake. The smell of starch starching the air.
It’s Your Own Fault
If you’ve ever been one of those daughters refusing / to sleep with your feet dangling from the bed, choosing
Overnight They Morph
Sometimes the apartment building stairs turn into a luge track, designed for speed, enabling a drunk man to fly right out through the window next to the main door.
Cool Heads
Swimming can tadpole your thoughts—slipping, bumping, pulling one another under.
A Recipe For Surviving High-school (Gay Edition)
Go to school with confidence in your outfits. Never feel like you have to be more “masculine” or like the other guys.
how to survive a ghost infestation
you were a ghost last halloween, / bed sheets with torn edges, crooked virgin mary
Monochromatic
“You have a very good gray going on.” That’s what my teacher at the YMCA, Mr. Newton, told me in my “Painting the Human Form” art class yesterday after taking a cursory glance at my work. “Going on” is the way he ends all his observations of my classmate’s paintings:...