eo-02

For the main event, she throws her neck over the chair-backand I go through the motions already made in a life wherewe still kiss with our mouths open at 50. I rub the tube down her lip like a piercer’s needle without his touch and murder her in my head:her forehead is not so tall, bone-drop over an eye to

Si mama, madaling-arawGone and away,Nagluluto, naglilinis–With ink hair leavingNangangaligkig ang mgaMarks on the bed, andKamay, buto, karne;Clogging the drain.Baboy daw ang ulam!She drips her wholeDugo, atay, puso;Body, mind, and soul–Paborito ko yun!Until she fallsAng sarap talaga ng lutong home…bahay ni mama! My mother is gonefaster than the sun.

I once pressed a sharpie into my palm with such forceit took three days to wash out. I left everything behind,and went east along an unpaved roadwith no endand found that I had gone nowhere,and that nothing had changedexcept the color of the treesand the sound of the leaves crunching beneath my feet.So yes – I know – I’m chipping

When my friend Linda and I planned a trip to Berlin, Vienna and Prague we had decided, on a whim, to end it in Slovenia. We wanted to go to a country that was not famous for slaughtering Jews, one where we could not possibly have any dead relatives. Slovenia fit the bill; its Jews were expelled in 1500 and

I indulge in our overweight toddlerevery time he runs all overmeasI lieprone in bed as breakfast gets coldbecause I can afford to get up latebecause I’m unemployed and not looking for a jobas I married rich and not the one I (still) loveas I was raised a practical man. Sometimes, I’m supine and it’s still a treat:the light massage courtesy

Back in school I learnedPerspective was something for art classStraight edges and connecting linesTo find a vanishing pointNow I am old enough to know betterI don’t know where the lines are any moreUntil I step over them or someone doesAnd it turns out there is an out of boundsIn a game I didn’t know was being playedAnd I was the

The President is unethical,The congress is thin on backboneBereft of complex thought.Ignorant, demented white menArmed weekend patriots.Armed black menDead first strapped later.I went online seeking factsThat matched my ownOf course, I was right.Looking people in the eyeHas become an intrusionWhile our thumbs grow powerfulOur necks bendAs we disappear into the palm of our hands

Anger lives in my right eyeAnger carries a straight razorAnd ‘trains Pitt BullsThe left eye weeps on FridaysIs vegan and recycles shitI sense the glint of crossed bladesListen with mutilated run away earsAs the wind frisks meSearching for smuggled logicInterrogates my trashFor signs of reasonThe blues and my shadow are friendsThey stand in for each otherI get blue when I

Their breath, goes somewhere yours cannotTheir eyes, closed to us but always wide open Their dreams, becoming a deep foggy voideverything is known, yet unacceptable Their emotion, dragging another knifeacross a loathed reflection another shard from a bleeding mirror, as thoughts never arefrozen in ice Their lives, bowing to invisible dictators we can’t see with open eyes Our lives, stuck

question asked by Savannah Dudley Uproarious joy drapes loosely over conflict,internal dialogue between self & self-with-panic. Beginnings of celebrations: Natasha Chen,a CNN reporter, says, This is a party—we have drag queens & an inflatable dinosaur. The future is a snake hole in the garden,the past a broken music box. I’m getting used to the possibilityof hope, although it taunts,says, Cower!

On April 12, 2005, a classmate repeatedly fondled my breasts after I asked him to stop. My friend’s mother was only a few feet away from us the entire time. Months later, she asked me why I didn’t tell her right then. Until that moment, the thought of telling her had never occurred to me. Journal Entry: So today I

Wolf (or is it a crocodile) crossing the bottom endof the page, moving from left to right.It has freshly stepped in, hesitant, one could sayas if lingering still in the corner. Take a closer look, and you’ll see it is on wheels.You will also notice the slight shifts in tone(brown to tan, burgundy to rust) and in texture(here woven, there

My shell has rotted beyond recognition, the prism of humanity fractured into compost. I have felt the humanness decay off my flesh. I feel incomprehension at the kaleidoscopic inside that is my expression; I fall between the crevices of identity, rigidity, meaning, singularity. I am not one thing, and I am not one identity. I recoil at every attack on

Up to your neckin beingco-optedadaptedinspecteddisinfectedsuspectedejectedwritten offinto the void.There is reluctancyof devotion,never the right partto begin with.Best years of your lifespent trying to beencompassedinto the works,proving yourself worthyto be part of thecohesive unit.Unity!They proclaim.If none, who’s to blame?Now that you’re out,you’re crying,“where’s the rest of me?”Hold your head high.The only thingthat’s left of you.Be glad of that, somehow.

=====so as not to miss the BIG SHOW eagerly we streamed into the Ministry of SpaceGuildsto sign our futures on line segments of unequal length where concepts of less/greater and equal don’t apply to infinite things. our signatures secured our position as waste colonialism, window seat, a payload programed to hurtle gradatim ferociter towards a new class of exoplanets in

We count headstones like this:Hankey, Hankey, Brown.Children chant games and tear through the woodsat dusk, circling up, taking turns poking a dead birdwith a stick, weightless ceremony, and at bedtime they will stuff their pillowswith prayers, uprooted lilies, and September.Do we still forget that stars hover in perpetual death? Through the dawn, each step stirs a murmurationof starlings, a swarm

The bad feminist’s friend says she’s a bad feminist. The bad feminist thinks she might be a bad feminist. The bad feminist likes Game of Thrones. American Psycho is one of her favorite movies, and she hates Mean Girls. There was a time when she despised the color pink, and she still wears pads instead of tampons. She has J.K.

A hospital nurse died alone in this housea century ago.She smoked cigarettes on the staircase,stained carpet with ash. I assume she misses admiring amberstreetlights out the windows,the gatherings of gnats around glass bulbs,the miniscule buzzing: a prayer on the verge of epiphany. All night I wonderif I’m gentle enough to the fallen leaves I’ve stepped on.I scratch at scabs on

The stares from bedridden people are haunting-C’mon, be a good sport, those stares are all they own,And you can’t, simply can’t ask her to shelter cries,As she never forgot, that missing light, a preyTo sudden famines-But soon life, and wind will break into the house,Even though you didn’t ask them in,Your wrath set on never stroking them, grass, trees,For too

We suspended the body Asked the snake to take the reigns Tied the Kundalini to the feet Took to the posture of hanging in space Surrendered – we died, a voluntary pulse The kind that dissolves us, into primal processes The moon spoke with a tune to awaken the ritual The lungs began to empty, crafting space Allowing control to

… a human being who applied the learning body sacrifice of active development, never let it happen to me … poetic ambitious satanic attacker’s synthesis your constant impregnation but there was literary communication parasites can ground writers, you’re interested in which one like forever confuses the brain to see what all previous nature has reinforced literature can be caught like