Teach me, empty plate. Teach me, knife and fork. / What will I want when the weight of an arm crosses me?

some days I drive out of town and walk to the horizon / but never get any closer it replaces itself / it surrounds me on all sides it circles me open

I need time / to practice death, walk rooms, conjure / all the words I’m going to write // while he’s away.

_You hear the faint sound of machinery in operation. / _An escape pod rests in the middle of the room.

I remember him and his partner embracing / in the café. The café on the corner / of Sanchez Street and Seventeenth Street.

my empty bus seat shaking its head at me as the bus driver drives off without me in it. // my dreams barely letting me into the room one hour before I have to wake up. 

The image is silly, of course. We are nowhere near / the sea & do not possess the ability to properly / drown ourselves the way sweet daughters must.

Please fly me to JFK, get me / on that train from the plane, / save me a seat so I can watch / God’s greatest creation

Before I can say anything, I feel her / sharp nails picking at my shoulder, / a leaf of me separating from my back

She’s not yours. / These are not mornings / you share with someone who once / was inevitable.

you LOL after I drive an hour // to a new friend who cancels, / sad smiley when a guy grabs my purse // at Chevron. I invite you to drink Zin on the beach, you miss the plane.

She watched me too. I was shocked by the gentleness of her eye, the soft, almost amber color, and her entirely unhurried presence. I expected something else, a darker eye or a colder look.

I remember it first, before circumstance, / mother, house or sky--the unexpected / brilliance burned to the back of retinas.

But (you can hear the but before I say it) there’s something in me now that survived years of quarantine by closing my eyes and dreaming of sand. Of being alone, far from the noise. Not you. Never you.

Picture a magic marker's / green line connecting death to life, pressure making it / curve until it’s circling and another season’s budding.

What will I achieve in these dreary days without you? / I want to tell you of this lonely time before winter sets in.

Macaroni days made Peggy nervous. Macaroni was at the end of the pasta aisle at the far side of the football-field sized store and that trek with Joshua’s customers seemed to take forever.

If he sat too long, he’d start to blend. / If he stood too long, he'd start to blend. / Colors seemed to run away from him / the longer he was awake each day.

Try again. It is not shock, not surprise. It is something else entirely. Try again. It is not an exaggerated, cartoonish expression. It is a true one. Try again. There is a glimmer of something else, something murkier.

The rabbit darts into the dark of my shadow, // and I almost believe it’s gone until I see / it’s burrowed under, through. It’s right /in front of me, nothing between us.

dread, that old pal, / stepping into the frame / like a reality show host with the release form, / the prison van idling at the curb.

She looked free in a way she never had at home. I thought about how she used to stand at the sink, elbows locked, washing the same plate three times over while the radio played low.

because they lived for doing, for telling others what to do, / for anger with strategic purpose, leaving and arriving / at their homes in darkness holding hours more of work

a mouth can be a weak point – an open wound – / to some, but she made it a gesture of life, of saving, / our saving.

"Your question makes me realize that the book is sort of a cacophony with a lot of different speakers, voices, and dialogue."

They didn’t take the car, / then it snowed overnight. / I got in the cold Bug after breakfast, / sniffed motionless, vinyl air.

The people into whose faces you look, wondering / could you love me? May I love you? They are strangers.

"She doesn’t believe in the silent treatment. The only thing funnier than a dog standing on two legs like a human, is your face getting further away and then closer again."

No hair / in the sink. No tumbled sheets. No echoes of arguments won and / lost.

Boursin on a stale pretzel with Carolyn / who wants us to love her new guy as much / as she does, frisée and free champagne with Audrey / who hates her boss.

less / full of bread, / less haunted by money. / Free of pain. Free of dairy.

The makeup team will smudge your mascara so you look tipsy. The hair team will carefully ruffle your blonde shoulder-length-cut.

Blue sky, edges on fire. From another / Life, this one.

As soon as I said it, you knew it was true, didn’t you? / You have always known the badger people. They / don’t care for your name, but they never forget you.

"I’m ultimately confronting that ghost of my childhood and telling them they don’t scare me anymore."

we two were too close and he looked at my chest for too long

displayed in accordance with Roy G Biv, for / it is one of few ways to show acceptance yet / still be on the payroll in Florida public schools

The difference between you and I is that you can leave anytime you choose. But this is my home.

Forgive us our trespass, sin of speed // burning up the world. The patchwork earth / hungers for our blood.

I grew up in a subdivision where streets met at 90 degrees and now I can’t find the center of things.

When he finally hung up his double-barrel and bunnystalker cap, he was dismissive of his lack of family and the mystery of his place in society.

But it’s hard to love what I am when I know it’s wrong. / I don’t easily forgive my mistakes in their swishing dresses / and careless mascara, with their impetuously long cigarettes.

Because / What isn’t love is nobody’s red sock / And somebody’s black boot.

You think it’s hot outside it’s hot in a house / when you’ve got nowhere else you can go, a glass of milk glowing like / radiation on a table

Priestess of Pan seeks creature to unwind with, / drink wine with, must be kind without being too nice.

Samantha, I am not good, / though my skin is soft and supple.

"At some point, it didn't even feel like I was shooting anymore; I was diving through the hoop every time I threw up my arms—like a dolphin, like water, like a fall of light."

Sometimes, what hurt the most / was your childhood phone number lost to memory, / its digits swimming down darkly through the depths.