It looks like you’re on your own tonight. You’re back Home. Your mother shed your old cocoon the moment you left all those months ago. A collage of songs you used to love and the smells of fabric softener from your old clothes waft into your room from the vent. You arrive hungry, with a […]

I’m engaged in a battle in a comments donnybrook over the Runaways movie. Despite Lita Ford having a few hits, she’ll forever be known as the chick who did “Close my Eyes Forever” with Ozzy Osbourne, growling in a smoky cave or some shit while Ozzy looks like a drag queen in the video. Aside […]

We had a secret wedding I crossed my legs towards yours And you, yours, towards me and we created a space between the church, the steeple I will sit like this till my kneecaps burn Because at age thirteen I read an article about body language And thought, this is my chance If you tuck […]

A Dedication to Violence, or The Chirps of a Swallow at My Window Mockingbird, take me away like a child chasing nightmares on the backs of sickened wings. Let me cling to the feathers and drift away from this haunted house of constraint under the shadow of a crooked cross.  Let me spear the night sky with […]

we ride skateboards on the edge of the street, one sneaker afraid to leave the pavement. all summer, we move through the triptych: me, legs sprawled on the carpet as we go between your sister’s room—which had the AC, the next size up for your gauges, hair dye— your bedroom—where I would draw or write […]

“And Then the Floods Came” Face masks are required for entry to most places now. The world is ending and we’re busy watching scary movies on your couch, trying to be oblivious to the worsening situation outside. The pandemic isn’t getting better. Have you checked the numbers lately? Have you checked the news? It’s not […]

Pain Pain in another’s heart is imagined  but never experienced the same.  Empathetic souls imagine  how they would feel to identify.   Others contend their pain is superior   but yours is nothing serious.  Religion declares your pain is penance; enduring it the key to salvation.  Hatred promotes this pain,  your kind should suffer for existing.  Love […]

you dress for work in straight skirt & paisley blouse. It’s camouflage, like a turtle  buried on the beach, how lost you were, newly left.  As your teen daughter, I determined not to follow you, wore men’s clothes. Why? Women are weak, get forgotten. You & I, we spun alone, separate eggs tossed in ocean […]

Lord, will those eyes become blinding?  Will those hands become terrifying fire?  Will that warm face become cosmic mystery again?  We were ready to run away to new land Our boats were rocking in the waves Our nets were miraculous for catching fish We have left behind the graves and those scowling that we find […]

Every Saturday night, cast in shadow and fog, our Crew – a Melvillian band of shadow laden pranksters – lingered curbside near a moon-shined fire hydrant.             “How many years we been submerged in America’s academic shackles?” one boy snorted and spit.             “Damn long,” another barked.             “Need out,” one said. “Need to get away.” The Crew […]