sometimes I cannot go to sleep and then it is always because images of you
in the night or early morning,
feeling like a breezy afternoon on my skin and tasting like
picking daffodils on my lips, won't leave me alone.
so I stay up,
writing you daisy chains in my head, hopping fences of sunflowers and hating that I barely know you and I want you so badly.
and I do want you so badly.
I want your laugh...

a bright yellow smack against a blue brick wall, white icing. I spat my gum into cool grass.

the sawdust taste behind my teeth
is brimming on my lips,
i am waiting to kiss summer.
the freckles i held onto violently
melt away below the doming clouds
all of me is anxious
for sun, and love again.
 

the metronomic clash
of cloud upon cloud, every 10 seconds
is measured in miles I’ve yet to walk on
an expanse of trees I’ve never seen
is playing make believe as matches
like god has taken a box and lit them,
one by one,
on the heel of his gilded boot
and set them down on the birthday cake of mortality
for all the forest to make wishes.

little israeli boy
with no horn rimmed glasses
They make him look smarter
than he is allowed

his mother walks him back
from flag football practices
notices with horror
that his freckles are all gone

while she hums for lost things
and her child, stacked and padded,
he looks at girls with long, thin legs
and forgets to feel ashamed.

I am trying my best to write a poem
I am trying my best to write a poem
but it's coming out sloppy, disdainful
but it's coming out sloppy, disdainful
I am coming out to write a poem
trying my best but it's sloppy, disdainful

looking out the window, the trees are lyrical
looking out the window, the trees are lyrical
the world is art and it's mocking me
the world is art and it's mocking me
the world is looking...

stove clicks, doesn't start
"I'm cold-"
put on a sweater.

Parlor air creeps into the open night, and the stale breath of Father's cigars dashes out all at once from the perpetually closed box some hellish Pandora has willed free. Cracked and tinkling windows which were previously never unbolted more than the space between two teeth hang with their jaws open embarrassingly. As if to scold them, the stippled shutters creak back and forth gently in the wind; every threat in the world seems hollow. There are pieces of tire,...

Susan and I were sitting at dinner. I sensed the margarita was getting to her just as she opened her mouth to speak.
“My husband used to give me this one perfume, said he mixed it himself. I used to get that perfume every holiday- birthdays, Christmas, anything. I didn’t mind because it was perfect. It was exactly my type.
“And then one day, I’m at work (my retail job), and a lady comes in with the same perfume. It...

Susan and I were sitting at dinner. I sensed the margarita was getting to her just as she opened her mouth to speak.
“My husband used to give me this one perfume, said he mixed it himself. I used to get that perfume every holiday- birthdays, Christmas, anything. I didn’t mind because it was perfect. It was exactly my type.
“And then one day, I’m at work (my retail job), and a lady comes in with the same perfume. It...