a conceptual shrimp uses its limbs to reshape the reader’s mind, mounding and clefting your mental world until it is the mental world of some other creature: shark, scallop, arthropod boiled down to pure flavor crunch.

It was my mother who taught me that hummingbirds don’t sleep: they fall into a state called torpor, which is deeper than sleep, more akin to hibernation.

I’m a little out of the loop.
Before the service, I buy breath mints
instead of flowers.
I wear the wrong shoes.
I leave my facial tissue in the car.

of mercy, this
is the oval egg
where mercy laid waste
and, wasted, layed
down her altar

“We can break the fourth wall. We’re writers—we do that.”

“I’m not that kind of writer,” I said.

I keep meaning to write a poem about something really smart.