Year: 2026

what even am i trying at   i would like not to be in these poems
the way i exactly was not being in my life while appearing 
very much to anyone observing to be a person inhabiting a life    ball don’t lie 
in the obliteration i once wondered at how wild it was
i could chop fruit so deftly when i wasn’t even there 
knife trust through strawberries   it was weird to have hands 
 i would like not to be in this poem 
but i can’t keep trying to write about these
neurons crucial to the generation of actual selfhood 
without showing up too   & how watching women’s soccer flung me 
(whoops!) back into this selfhood  what the fuck was that about
except maybe soccer was mine before i even was mine
the way empathy belonged to art before it was between us
we’re always reflecting off of everything  always stealing   the air on the field
isn’t any different  but call it an atmosphere and it becomes one
even these mirrors metaphors for mirrors 
we think of pain as private but our brains treat it as something shared* 
when i wasn’t there no one could see i was shards   but here i am 

*from *the secret lives of sports fans* by Eric Simmons

I want you to think big here
he said. The forest trembling behind him
like water about to brim
over the lip of the leak bucket.

Among them slipped
the fallen bodies,
the fruitfall of a season’s
second glance.

There’s a word that’s off limits,
but it’s the only word for it—
this littering of corpses.

The birch tips going pinker
just thinking about it,
going so twigpink
you could taste it.

All the stream could do
was sit there
looking freezing. And I said
oh yeah how big.

when the moon is void of course
the moon is void, of course

     avoid first dates, interviews, surgeries

the moon is a horse is void of course
and no one can talk to a horse of course

     avoid dentists and closing deals

that is of course unless the horse
is the famous, the one and only moon

     you can reminisce, meditate, daydream

go right to the source and ask the moon
she’ll give you an answer that you’ll endorse

     absolutely do not get married

of course everything is always inside in one
of course we are going to have bad days, many bad days

     sometimes we’re running in the emptiness

but she’s always on a steady course
though some hours void of course, of course

.

.

.

(with apologies to Mister Ed and Gertrude Stein)

“Haldol,” the nurse said. “Haladol?” I mis-
pronounced it. Have a ball. “Haldol,”
she repeated, “is for psychotic breaks.”

“Is that what she’s having?” The nurse
shrugged and smiled flat. Shit’s weird.
“I just played her back her voicemails
from this weekend.” “And?” Hijenit’smon

Listeni’mhearinyouanyourfriendright
nowneststoreandthenurseinshearyootoo
andlookheredonawtgivehimanymonee

“She smiled the entire time. I’ve never
seen her smile like that. ‘Is that me?
I like this! Thank you!'” Shit’s weird.

I don’t want to end up like that but
it’s just a matter of degrees. I talk
to myself constantly, in the other

room with the TV up too loud.

(I wrote this during a seizure — something I’ve never done before — and then added the bit below the asterisk after it was over, and things didn’t feel so magical anymore. Then, after workshopping it with my (mainly) prose writing group, I wrote a second version. Not sure which I like better. The second version is trying to make it understandable, while the first version is trying to mimic the experience.)

Everything looks
so clean.

Even the dusty
bathroom is clean,
complete.

There’s a sheen
to each
object — not an aura;
I mean, a light
from within.

Some calm
purpose.

A happiness.

I pour tea,
pour juice,
then forget
I did it.

Then remember,
go back
to the counter and
laugh:
they’re neatly
equidistant,
the space evenly
divided by
a banana.

Drinking the tea,
drinking the juice,
looking out the window,
the pearl-gray wings
of a pigeon flash
white in sunlight
into a cornice
of the church.

Dostoyevsky was right:
I will never
let anything
break the spell
of this peace.

Ever.

***

An hour later,
the light is too bright,
everything’s a mess,
and there’s something
I should be doing.

__________________


Having a Seizure, 7am

The apartment looks
mysterious. I walk through each room
feeling complete.

The bathroom seems so clean.
There’s a sheen to each plastic travel size sunscreen,
can of dry shampoo, each nail polish bottle
on the immaculate glass shelves.
All have a history, calm purpose,
their own happiness.

I pour tea, pour juice, then forget
I did it. Then remember — go back and laugh:
the cups sit, neatly equidistant, evenly divided by
a banana.

Out the window, a pigeon’s pearl-gray wing
flashes into a cornice of the church.

Who said, I would not exchange this felicity
for all the joys that health may bring??
Dostoyevsky?
When the seizure’s over,
it’ll come to me.

*

But when it’s over: lights
too bright, glass shelves
dull with dust, headache
beginning, some oppressive thing
I should be doing.

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Says Desmond, waving his Capri Sun, “I’m the 

president.” In the car, “Iris,” by the Goo Goo Dolls comes on and I actually

get shivers. What is happening? “Everything seems like a movie,

yeah you bleed just to know you’re alive.” It’s clearly about

the Spectacle. What is happening, I continue to think, as I wait for

the green left turn arrow, my reality augmented with this song and 

sudden understanding of a recent TikTok trend, a rampantly nostalgic

one. My sanity is not boozy enough, and there’s no reset button

for sanity. I have been working all day in the demeaning, empowering

way that a job is a job and inhumanity is inhumanity. The inanity 

of tasks, some tasks at least. I bought a bouquet of flowers for Coco’s

birthday but they won’t last. My apathy won’t last. Desmond sings along

to the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and dances.

Hey now, friend. Now I’m staring at an empty glass. Now I’m wondering

about the apocalypse and the rocket NASA just sent around the moon.

How much skepticism is allowed? Pondering my lack of options, I pour

a beer, admit I’m uptight, think of lost loves as a way of remembering

that I am a complex person. I have loved a circus performer and many

poets. The twigs hereof are physic. The lies hereof are physic, too, and

worsen with time and space, but my love for the circus performer was

not a lie. None of my loves have been lies, though some of them have

been stupid, possibly ridiculous, and caused not by the relationship 

between two subjects but instead by the thrall between two love objects.

I begin to see my errors. The excessive garlic, the one drink too many.

Coco screams because she can’t make the CD play pay her favorite 

K Pop Demon Hunters song. I’d like a nice Bordeaux and some cheese.

Too much meatloaf has ruined the evening. I’m not a behaviorist but

I get the appeal of pattern and repetition. If life is no more than a series

of gestures, a broken series of skin-of-the-teeth, mostly successful

signals, if it is, then I talked enthusiastically about data sets with 

someone who was relieved that I could put one together. “I’m the

President!” Insists Desmond. I don’t want the world to see me, I think,

I want to rewatch The X-Files while exercising on the elliptical trainer.

Now there’s coffee and the morning, the prayer book and portrait of 

my great, great grandmother I found in the box while cleaning out my

studio. Trevor asks if this poem is giving me trouble and it is. Coco

and Desmond curled into our bed last night and I imagine we are in

a fox den together. The Department of Homeland Security is still shut

down and I hate the DHS but like someone I know who works there

and wonder to what extent a philosopher would find me ethically

complicit in all the harms perpetuated by my country, if philosophers

even think about that. Lettuce and radishes are sprouting, just not 

where the squirrels keep digging. The questions come, like always.

Who was I in the nineties? Often a girl with a boyfriend and many 

confusing friendships. Sometimes I was in China. That’s not the nostalgia

of the TikTok trend. Sometimes I was on the back of my friend’s 

bicycle with my arms around her waist, riding over the Pearl River 

in Guangzhou, or running through construction sites. Nostalgia

gets a little more interesting when subjected to reality.

Do you even know what destination
Means? How about adventure?

Of course, because that’s an everyday
Occurrence—a quiet miracle every time

You leave and come home safe
In a gift shop I ask you to put down

Some whimsical trinket of ceramic
Or wicker, afraid it will break in

Your tumbling eager hands
Don’t worry mommy, you say

It’s not fragile—a word you learned
From someone with lots of experience

Watching sturdy stuff shatter:
Tech bubbles, ankle bones, appetite

Migraine day 3

Corkscrew in my head let’s celebrate 

haha no haha happy no good friday 

worship at the self serve dog wash

old in amerikkka I live inside

a John Prine song welcome

you losers drunks failures theives 

let’s smash our heads against a tree

begin again smash harder

I love you all

It’s not like I knew what her favorite color was or what she dreamt about. We were matched. We married. We had similar taste in wine. I was good looking and she was flashy and we were popular. But then the boss said trouble was coming. The boss said get the fuck out as fast as you can. She had questions. She had so many questions. Who did she think she was asking me all of these questions? We began to flee the city, but she was still nagging me about leaving our friends our families behind. She was married to a God-fearing man. What else could she possibly desire? She was crying and saying something about all the screaming. About the fire falling from the sky. About the stench of burning bodies. She was saying something and then she wasn’t. They say she turned into a pillar of salt, but how would I know? I never looked back. I just kept going.

a flare of mirrors followed backwards down
to the field the field which does exist and composites
every met field and imagined field and watched
and over heard of and read about a latticed strata   there was  a before
and that before took notes    a pulse   want’s rote echo off
want’s surfaces the brain really wants an answer
to the who-am-i question*  the field is a container
the way the game is a container     we find out
by finding out  a heart char stirred game recognizing
game recognizing game  

*from *the secret lives of sports fans* by Eric Simmons

I call to my wife across country club bathroom stalls
Which reminds me of summer camp

Hiding amidst pink and potpourri to avoid a plague
Known to most as competitive dodgeball

I don’t glean yet that I’m dreaming
I wish I had met you sooner

That someone could have cradled my wrist
When I could only describe myself as

Abominable in headphones
The bitterest pith in the bowl

Every arrow that skims past my child’s cheek
Is a gaping wound just beneath my clavicle

The reason I am so far behind
Is I always have been