Sometimes Clark wondered, while lying semi-conscious on the kitchen floor, feeling his skin cells replicating and shedding and his toenails growing: if he could go back in time, to the start of all of this, if only to save Kristen and Isla, would he clean that frying pan? No, he decided every time. It was a matter of principle. He wasn’t unreasonable. He understood where Kristen was coming from; he saw all perspectives and weighed…
“They’re only upset about the damn octopuses,” declared Claire from behind her laptop screen. “That’s not right. Octopi? Octopodes?” puzzled Sean, half-listening. “Three murders in a week, no known suspects, and people don’t give one shit.” “Well, not entirely true; from what I’ve seen people are pretty excited about it.” “It’s sick. These men had families.” “Well so did the octo…paes.” “You know they haven’t found their heads yet? The sick fuck is probably keeping…
The prompt I got for this screenplay was that it had to involve New Year’s Eve and the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. The rest is based on true events.
I am the worms in the yellow walls of the Concord house caused by the shit-leaking upstairs toilet. I am the molding water spot we both saw but would not ever speak of. I am the side yard weeds I said we’d pull. You are the retaining wall, crumbling, that we can’t afford to fix just yet. Just yet. I am the broken tooth becoming abscessed. I am the dishes left, resentfully, unscrubbed. I am…
Curled up in the cup of a slingshot – bands taught – which giant will I fell? note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their intended order, start here.
We got the call and went to visit mem. No vigil. Just a business transaction. Numbers, at least, we could try to comprehend. She spoke of insurance, rings, inheritance. Bryson got pep’s final slice of cherry pie. Walter got the fresh-pressed suits and ties. The funeral was a complete fucking lie. Father spoke of the glory of Jesus Christ. He’d never known the glory of Gene Lemay, Who only went on Sunday to keep mem…
That fall morning we moved to Concord the neighbor made a V with his fingers and wriggled his arm like a charmed snake. High school ASL class failed us so he wrote on a legal pad: VINES. He mimed the digging and ripping I didn’t plan on doing, and pointed to the hydrangeas lining his side of the ruins. I recognized the next sign: Two hands around his throat. But yard work, as is wrote,…
for me writing poems is vomiting onto the bathroom floor after a blacked out thursday night I hold off until I can’t and then the act itself – convulsive, jagged glass and bile, perverse relief – sometimes I see patterns in these ink blot tile emissions revealing to me omens better left unprophesized note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their…