Everything

At 6 PM in Tempe, I am thinking about kissing you by the tea kettle in a kitchen that smells like basil and outside the sky thinks I am too bold and she blushes all pink and pink and wine red. The air on my balcony is humming as the boys above me smoke. They […]

Dearest, The god of my neighborhood is the abandoned grain elevator\ plunging into broken-windowed smiles north of the railroad tracks [a wasp between screen and window pane] Curved like rose petals, pieces of vodka bottles embellish the curb like spilled water [thrashing on the sill] If it could fit in an envelope, I would mail […]

Two days after Christmas, my neighbors carry out their stiff tree like a dead body. They peer around to see if anyone is watching, then heave it into the dumpster meant for garbage, and walk away, pine needles littering the path like a trail of crumbs. The last time I saw you, promises dropped from […]

The stars are serrated teeth that I wear as a necklace collected from all the nights that almost ate me as Cate is leaning backwards on the wooden railing calculated so her collarbone jutting into the night is a drawn arrow quivering in position. He is too high to ever notice but that’s not anyone’s […]

aquamarine bead curtains parting in this pressure zone and basing nightly preferences on the girl with the fewest split ends. lines on the wall intersected, harsh and rebellious at paint’s fine touch like possums in the midday sun when book bags snap aloud. every bottle cap tossed aside and tucked in the folds of lifetime […]

Veins are long lines of genes running through you, the last words of “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” in my brain tell my heart to keep pumping   to my toes, she relives summers spent slumming. This is the question he should have asked his wife: How many glasses of wine before you […]

find the scrapheap. 1998 hardtop jeep wrangler, lapis blue — more of a dirty yves klein now — but really, any old car works. tear it to pieces. scrap metal of the gods. stack armour on armour on skin. chrome grill on car door on collarbone. shred the passenger seat — remember that? where you […]

your hair’s wet because we went night swimming the mothlight furring my forehead together and pulsing with the spectral heave of the moon these tides knowing me the way i know myself pensive and cold and slick along the insides. hoarse siren song and the fuzzy swan-curve of my neck the waves carving me into […]

I could hear the bomb tick in your jacket. Between layers of leather, so close to chest. I wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t been pushed together on the train. You caught my bags and fall and I had to say thank you, fist making a zero around the metal pole. Now I eat from […]

In June, we are inside out, mistaken for blooming. We steal apple blossoms, pluck them from low branches like burs from horsetails and braid them through our laces as we do between the trees. We snap stems into hairclips and paint our eyelids orange with pollen, our ankles gray from parched dust that floats on […]

I want to set my skin on fire but I’m supposed to be at his apartment in an hour when i come across the dress. a long sleeve, four inches above the knee length floral patterned dress. it was hidden away in the back of my small dorm room closet it is hidden with the […]

and we’re lying on the floor blanketed by a darkness that presses into every part of the room except the candles on the bookshelf an ellipsis of three small flaxen flames for a moment with the television muted it is just the two of us tenderness in chaos but with fresh tears the three little […]

凉粉: cold noodles best served on hot summer days. I watch 妈妈 dip her hands into silver bowl, scoop starch, chase a village long-gone; and I want to hug her but her hands are tied, her apron is tied, her feet are tired – of standing on lands not made for legs bent under weight of loss […]

[12:13AM] revolution is a self-taught language and i’ve always been multilingual. [1:38AM] some rot can be cut away with a fruit knife. [6:54AM] most mold cannot. [7:01AM] pick up. please. [7:10AM] there will be supermoons and moths with funny names to look forward to someday soon (atlas moth, comet moth, death’s-head hawkmoth, emperor gum moth, […]

on some days i am not birthed on others i am lake ripples dragging my ring finger over your thigh these nights i dream in anaphora, on some moons i am catharsis on others i am dry, swaying tree branch you remind me of cinnamon & on some thoughts i cannot help but cry because […]

i am tangled in the textured cracks of your cinnamon swirl palms so i crinkle up our poetry into an atom i am chipped nail polish painted over i am pushing the pebbles deeper into the earth with the heel of my knock-offs you are the dark splotches where the columns meet the ceiling, like […]