I would send you love letters

via carrier pigeon

hope they wouldn’t land

in the wrong laps

I would walk bare-assed

through Antarctica,

crawl through the Sahara Desert

and then back

Await for a response, get a waft of you:

warm, spicy, slightly woody and sweet

with a hint of bitterness…

like nutmeg...

My cheeks heated up as soon as Chris started talking. As he continued to spew verbatim what Donald Trump has said he will do, what he won’t do, and what he should have credit for— all I could see was Chris spewing spittle while sucking his orange dick....

Breathing slowed

to match the crawling

pulse of music in the background

of the fantasy latticed brain.

Familiar, yet strange.

Growing a vegetable garden

with the deceased,

traveling across seas,

all the while

a pool of drool

is expanding across my pillow...

It all started with the old cars hidden in the woods, my obsession with the forgotten, and the first time I had ever seen a dead body.

Tony and I had been walking the tracks that stretched through several small towns, trying to have our own “Standy by Me” adventure. When we set out early that afternoon, we had no idea just how much our excursion would mirror the film....

“Ossipee, New Hampshire!” Carmela yelled over the cacophony of the clamoring patrons in the bar, correctly answering the trivia question: _where is the home of the first snowmobile? _

__

Her eyes were green and exhilarated and they met mine_._ She smiled, I smiled, and then she kissed me sweetly on the cheek.

As she turned back towards her glass of half drank ale, I asked myself how I could’ve go...

I blinked away the tears that started to come as soon as I walked through her door and saw the excitement charge through her two dogs. I hadn’t seen them in three months, and I had thought I would never see them again. I missed them, and I missed her.

Bashfulness and caution coated our dialogue for the first few minutes. And then our lips met, automatically, like they were always fated to meet.

...

This collapsed roof is no match

for the storm

that pushes itself inside

rearranges the rot with its twister

hisses and spits

your memory and song

back to life

your blues escape

spiderwebbed windows

I can’t tell if I’m being hit

with rain or saxophone sobs

I dance...

I stood in the doorway of my home and rubbed the sleepiness from my eyes, expecting to wake up from a dream. But no, a goose wearing a bowler hat still stood in front of me.

“My name is Fraaaaanke!” He honked again, this time with aggression. “Let me in!”

I slammed the door, retrieved my phone from the kitchen counter and called my psychiatrist....

Before I could protest, Shauna was biting the strange man’s bottom lip and dragging him toward the club bathroom. I exchanged concerning looks with the rest of the women in the group; most of them just shrugged. Electric music boomed and my stomach waded in a pool of alcohol. I glanced over to the bathroom entrance where Shauna had disappeared, and a pair of panties and a tiara with the word “Brid...

They spit in his face, then wonder why

he is so angry. Humiliated

hands up

hands tied, heart wrecking ball

smashing through a wall of chest

Dignity demolished...