I always step around his mess...

7:23. The grid abandons us.

War came home tonight. We weep and hug, while he stares over our shoulders, like the statue we'll make of him. We pour a drink for his shaky hands, wheel him past his friends the dead, and lie to each other about other, far off places as if we knew.

As black as his socks with a hole in them she used to sew while watching. The octopus has three hearts you know. Yes, No and Maybe. As black as inkpots, inkjets, as black as typewriter ribbons and the Gutenberg press, as black as the ink of a trillion

"What does it say about our political process when I could pick students at random out of any of my classes who would do better than the actual candidates. That scares me. What’s happening to people? How did we get here?”

Alright is alright but alright is a state of mind, right?

The morning of her suicide, Nonny Rice received a letter.

I was sitting there drinking with Paul at the bar, and it was a Friday night and I was I was feelin good. I didn't have to go to work in the morning, and I had a few drinks and food in me, and I able to that on da cheap, which felt good. And Paul…

My father bouncing his leg to slow rock music with me on one knee, telling me I should keep a special place in my heart for my teeth, to remember where I lose them, on the playground like he did when he was my age, fighting a friend named Bobby-Joe. Or else I could lose…

you're a musician taking notes, recording overtones before the van gets packed up with echoes

It is not simple to love in two places, and I have always been a restless woman waiting for signs. Then you appeared walking on my very grave while the stars aligned themselves in patterns of celestial light. I have watched the moon eclipse with you drawing breath…

Mam lights a cigarette and the car fills with smoke. She opens the ashtray in the middle of the dashboard and lipstick-stained butts stick out like tombstones. Her hand sweeps the ash from her lap and the Old Man drives on, the dotted lines in the middle

Soul, being, essence, fire, dream, auburn, scent, inhumanity, starry, ripe, free, heaven, transcend, memory, butterfly, chrysalis, please, mad, ecology, teach, tear, lachrymose, cry, frown, smile, love, thought, potential, season, poetry, verse. Transubstantiate,…

I laughed and made jokes about chicken airplanes and my pot belly and my skinny arms and legs and laughed and laughed by myself.

"I’m still doing research for my intensive seminar on ‘The Troggs: Wild Things, or Mild Things?’”

On my way home that first night, I stopped off at a liquor store on San Pablo Avenue and bought a semi-expensive ($2.98) bottle of zinfandel, a real luxury for us. But I figured I would have a paycheck coming and wanted to celebrate my getting a real jo

I woke up pissed off—like that feeling you get when you take a long nap in the afternoon. Except instead of being on a couch or a bed, I was trapped in a mashed-up Honda on I-75.