Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

You’ve spent a lifetime training
for this.

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.

love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.