TO BE PREGNANT

The winner of the latest contest
highly recommends
crack cocaine.

“…like chugging nine cups of coffee at once,”
he says, “a lot of words
will pour forth if you allow them.”

This is pleasant and similar
to going to the movies with your mother
on Christmas day,
not quite Jewish,
not quite Christian, you sit
downing popcorn
and crying because the main character
is pregnant.

You want to be pregnant.

Someone robbed you at knife point this morning.
You were only trying
to make the bed.
They went for the throat.
Missed.
Gutted the stuffed owl that Nana gave you for Easter.
It was sad.
You’ll have to tell Nana.

ANOTHER LETTER TO MY PSORIASIS

sometimes when the skin falls
from your head
it makes a home in your hair
and you pick it out
(you can’t be walking around
with festering skin in your hair)
but you feel bad
because somehow
it had a right.

NICOLE AND I

We lived together for some months.
I moved out
with zero notice
aside from my shit
no longer
being there.
I had to squeeze through
or otherwise
there would be a lack of air
so grand
that even the rats
would begin to leer murderously
at the flamingos
fucking atop
the nearest lake.
I had to leave my beach cruiser in our (her) bedroom.
I had needed her help
just getting the thing
into my car when I first bought it
and I couldn’t very well
ask for help
again. I’m not very good
at asking
for help. And
as something unnamed
pours forth, I know she’s still receiving
what’s left
of my year’s subscription
to The Black Warrior Review
which I was only receiving
because of a fifteen dollar entry fee
to a contest
which I did not win
because, naturally, I am not
very good
at all.

HOW TO COMPOSE A SONNET

When all influences choke on the injection, when you’re cold just
talking to your mother in an August room, it seems very pale. Look at
a sentence, take a knife to it, take a torch to the fucker and ask it
out for drinks afterward. Quivering- it will be very happy you’re
giving it the attention it believes it deserves. Stuck in a well,
stuck licking the bricks of another man’s leftovers. So what she’s
only fifteen? She has seen a Dublin skyline hasn’t she? Well there you
go. A justification on a plate for your swinish consumption. Almost
tossed up all over my own feet this afternoon. It was sexy…being in
the shower, heaving and very glad the sound of the water concealed the
sounds of your discomfort. Disappear. Make your friends spit down a
tube and wait for your reply. Please don’t call here ever again,
please don’t offer anything up for the sacrifice, I have no desire for
the village to thrive, I want to see the entire straw structure
suffocate successfully.