One after another, they descend a jacob's ladder rising from the smoke machine smog holding banana-gold pythons draped over their shoulders. They hold these slaves like an atlas. Men are held down with smooth lips gathering tenderness.

We have, all of us, predicted our deaths. By predicted I mean conjured or imagined, wished for or used as a weapon, a means of manipulation.

You once said to me—as a joke, I suppose—that all your books are “brief, collaborative, and plagiarized,” but really what is the secret to your somewhat monomaniacal rate of production, especially the last decade?

If I show you an image of a bird flying, you might think freedom, or graceful, or wings. You might remember your mother pointing to the sky, naming the bird starling, heron, crow. But all of that is yours.

It turns out some people will risk anything for a haircut. They will meet under a bridge, they will text unknown numbers, they will venture out into a pandemic. It turns out that I may have a strange relationship, obsession—whatever you want to call it—with hair, but so does almost everyone else.

A LINE BREAK IS A LOVELY THING SEE IT'S NOT EXACTLY A PERIOD OR A COMMA IT'S KIND OF LIKE A HALF-BREATH OR A MOMENTARY PAUSE OR THE "MA" BETWEEN YOUR CLAPS OR A KNEE LENGTH DRESS I MEAN A LINE BREAK IS A KIND OF COURTESY

I’m so well recovered I dream of cramming teeth into my gums. Smile like an alley of garbage cans, a pane of bowling pins. Give me metal, I’ll gift you a turkey. And now the poem turns to hunting, in each declaration some allele of violence.

Riverweeds trace our elemental body / while the ones we love, the faultless ones, spin records in the warehouse / where we sleep. I ring my bell in darkness—

When it thaws the worms will move again, I said, among new rocks. They will work the soil into lace until the rains lift them to the grass, where the birds will part their beaks and bow down to them. I moved the hair from your face. I did not mean to invade. But I thought it was time that you knew.

“I rented a video from Facets. It sounds interesting.” When Selena shared this with her partner, Ry replied, “Another porno?” Selena had been bringing home lots of “interesting” videos since they’d picked up a small television with built-in VCR from Goodwill.

I don't want to go home. / Crumbled bricks, pamphlets // stained with salt. Mother's / street, black-tarred, whistling, // whistling.

Address: Papa has a lot of rules and his new rule is that we’d better not tell people where we live anymore. He used to not care, and I was allowed to invite my friends over and give them the apartment number and everything, but ever since that guy followed Mama home in his truck yelling about she’s a dirty commie and she should go back to where she came from, Papa says to just keep it general and tell my friends if they want to come over...

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At the time of my commission, I did not know all the things this man would do, which means I did not know federal troops would be ordered into the cities, that water cannons would be fired, that there would be dogs, horses, rubber bullets, tear gas, that all of this that had for decades been taking place against civilians abroad would now take place, here, against civilians at home

& then the erotic self begun. The pink parts shut-up in the eternal & the jealous. Obsidian unfurls its wet petals. Composure divine, as a crown of snakes’ synchronized uncoiling witnesses the male animal become marble.

On 9/11, with the radio transcribing the ongoing events and his white coworkers in the plant nursery going mad as though the place was burning down, all my dad could do was laugh. As far as he knew, the Omaha nursery was fine. The roof was still above their heads. The ground was unmoving. The sky still blue, and most importantly there was work to be done.

we take turns / taking pains / on the days we stomach together. / you’re in / prime / puking condition / after a bloody-nippled marathon. / idols are made / in amniotic fluid, clay / and tough mudder usa.

My sons are already / crawling, crawling / over the rug where / we used to lie / talking, talking / about our days / and day in the ab- / stract—

Officially—according to the Nassau County Medical Examiner—officially, we were both dead. When we boarded the plane in LaGuardia, we had been in caskets. What an incredible idea, our grandchildren must have thought, unearthing the deceased.

At the eastern edge of the City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem, a staircase drops into a cave where the naturally pulsing Gihon Spring burbles up from a bedrock crack. The water runs into a narrow tunnel leading deep within the earth, directly beneath the ruins of the ancient city.

The air - was Close - the Pane - slid High - / The Sill Imbued with Dust - Gave Up / A Maple Wing - of Brussels Lace - / A Tachnid or a Horse - Fly -

When someone at school asks, “Where are you from?” what they mean is, “Are you from the wet side or the dry side?” You are from the wet side, the side more prone to damage.

When my mind plucked me / abruptly from earth and gently // laid me in abstraction, time went and saw / the world.

Sixty years now the town of Centralia has been burning. Some folks say it’ll take two hundred years more to burn itself through. The maze of coal mines underneath us caught fire and there’s enough kindling there for centuries and air will always find its way through the cracks of the earth to keep it going.

THE FIGHTING CONTINUES // as daily 30 corpses / continue life performing the same / highwire act // Long-established toponymy / today it’s known by heart / that Tecoluca and San José las Flores / are noms de guerre / indications of the line of fire

Though I’m precious not all my thoughts are // of my own hand. So with my father’s hand / writing I acquired imagination in small caps. // My letters bubbled up the page in many large // accidents. I had his teeth to grind them away. / It wasn’t my imagination that licked my stout // heart clean.

The buildings were rundown and whatever light came from them was like the leftover glow of an all-night party. Tonight, those same lights were electrified, lit up along the grid.

In early April of 2022, in the second month of the Russian invasion of and war on Ukraine, Phoebe Bosché, Editor of Seattle-based Raven Chronicles Press, invited me to interview Christine Lysnewycz Holbert, Founding Editor and Publisher of Lost Horse Press, as part of her Raven Chronicles’ “Raven Talks / qaẃqs” podcast.

He stared down the neck of the guitar like a rifle sight. The shelves in the glass case between us were lined with switchblades, laptops, engagement rings and arrowheads. A small fan on the counter blew only on the clerk. BEWARE: GUARD FERRETS, said a sign taped to the side of the register.

you cannot grow faster than you can rot.