It is impossible to leave and it is impossible to stay, because your life is here, because it will not have you, because you carry it, because it is fragile.
I do not want to be polite, not really. I do not want to stand at attention, or cross my legs poked shut by your verses.
Impossible to build on uneven territory. Necessary to establish a foundation.
Don’t you get bored? they’d ask me about like the 5K, 10K, all the distance stuff, 25 laps around the track. I would be so bored. No. I don’t get bored, I was already bored. Pain distracts you from being bored and god do you need that.
I slept like a hot carbon barrier to the earth. In the dark, a further darkness: owl-hoots with my hands attached. I realized there was a kitten living in the corner, in the dream, it had birdhouses for sale.
Oh boy do I love explaining to the angry soccer mom that the Pikachu her daughter received is not, in fact, a boy’s toy and that we are only currently carrying Pokémon in all of our Happy Meals™.
We could be many things – I could give it up,
I could tell you exactly what to do.
So the broccoli on my plate are elms, the mashed potatoes a castle, and the brown sauce is the moat’s muddy water. The sauce’s beans are crocodiles to scare off your enemies. In the castle there’s a radish that rules the kingdom, and a tower where a small marinated carrot I adore is being held captive.
Progress. It's supposed to be good
for you, for you, and only you.
I liked the emergency room doctor who said, “This isn’t an emergency. You could’ve waited another hour.” Then stabbed a thing into my lung.
The student loan bubble? Tensions with China? The hollowing of rural America? The collapse of the reasonable center? Medical debt, race relations? My God, the climate crisis, and on top of all that the looming threat of another four years, which, all liberal hysteria aside, our enemies in the Kremlin were probably planning right this moment? It added up, and it added up, and it added up until one actually could not believe how much it was adding up.
I want to start by saying that in the fifties and sixties Jews and Blacks moved into Shaker Heights.
I want to start by saying that the press said they were welcomed.
I want to start by saying they were not welcomed.