it is the waking that is the hardest. the first step in sleep deprivation: you learn you miss dreaming of holes, the spaces between lines, the gap between the train and platform. you dream of ways in which to die, how the train brushes against your feet, the space just big enough for your thigh. […]
Month: April 2018
A POEM CELEBRATING SOME THINGS THAT DON’T WORK
Acrostics. Academia. Balancing work, life and a healthy sleep schedule. Breaking up in your head with people you don’t even go out with. Confessing to your first love at the wrong place and time. Denial when you don’t mean it. Even if you do mean it, does that really work? English as second tongue. Editing. […]
IN THIS STORY, YOU SAYING HOW YOU FEEL “ALL RIGHT” IS NOT A CAUSE FOR CONCERN
In this dream, you shed your skin and cast away your leather wings; from your pockets, spill these things – antiplatelet medicines, Clopidogrel, Aspirin. Warfarin, for battles within. In another, I hold your chin and nothing else. Come, unspin this long dream of safety pins and other stories, wherein the might of the might-have-been becomes […]
13 Superstitions for a Damsel in Distress
On the backstreet home, watch out for black cats stalking your footsteps. Don’t step in puddles with your high-heeled horseshoes: the clack draws all sorts of bad folk. Knock on wooden doors along the way – let them know you are there, once, or twice: unexpected deaths come in threes. Ring every bell – let […]
From Z to A, A Lovebound Zoetrope Trips In Her First Pair of Dancing Shoes
jazz, booze, brazen pizzazz, zouks daze, putz rezones contemporary votary youth. yell, yes, yourself yearns inexpert, co-existing, bemixed jukebox. next, proxy ‘howdy’ – who, which fellow, why? walleyed, worship quivers: reserve leaves, salvation arrives volubly, requests. puzzled, you jumble, quake, jumped-gun. mother, tortoised beneath table, watches daughter’s social, reminisces pregnancies. warns – his compass veers […]
ode to first strikes
oh, monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be: the unlikely story, here we are, orbiting outside space of closed bar, between us a bridge, both of us victims of some violence: you, the first stone cast, the queen dethroned, me, the first to leave, a nomad in this empty echo. […]
Constraint
spwm day 7
Passengers
I am the first to awaken the first pod to crack open I am the unfortunate accident 90 years too early I am the lonely man the first man the first man to walk 90 years too early I am a system malfunction of a man I am the ship and its pods and the […]
Full Life Plan 1999
Finally, you’ve found me. No, sorry: I don’t have all the answers. The ones I do – hoverboards don’t exist. Yes, you grow even taller. You become taller than even Father. No, I’m still single. Yes, you get to buy Power Rangers CDs. Yes, there’s still Pokémon, and yes, Ash still hasn’t won the league. […]
Rusty
Lying on the communal bed miles from home and desperate, I bash myself into other conversations, extend earphone tentacle smuggled under sock; laughs at the cover, I swear it’s good, track 14, I listen to it in the shower at home, more laughs; friends whose names I’ve forgotten ask what it’s about, I try to […]
ugly stage 