Nine of Hearts
I always thought she looked best, healthiest, happiest, when she was in a tank top and the
dirty baggy jeans we swapped back and forth until they fell completely apart, a joint in her
mouth and an axe in her hands, splitting firewood for a winter that she probably wouldn’t end up
sticking around for.
House of Cards
you let victory linger / in your mouth until you forget its taste, /remember its shape.
Even This Place Once Had a Mother
Now that the car I was made in is gone, I wonder what will happen to me.
Schedule Snafu at the Cultural Center
We could be your favorite place in the city, a still monument to ground that’s always shifting.
Woman-Body for Patriarchy
Bend down / and reach / through / the dark hole. / You’ve won:
Love Potions
“You’re wrong,” he finally said. “There’s no hell. Today is all we have.” The man blinked twice, then walked away shaking his head, a small man carrying on his shoulder the weight of a world without redemption.
bisect:ual
isn’t it queer being queer / queer in that you search to find one’s / self
Do or Don’t or Do
You take your son home to California with you for visits and one day your son peels you like the tangerines in your parents’ yard and you step out clean and open, nutritious, and your seeds can be planted to make new tangerines.
Sally, or How to Walk a Dog
Something about Sally’s shadowy gait is familiar to the young woman’s dog and it seizes and yelps like a cut wire, emits unsettling dog-screams of deep yearning, runs in large loops to and from the window, my friend my friend it is my friend.
There’s Really No Need to Talk About This
They had told each other they loved one another before, writing it in chicken scratch inside Valentine cards and muttering it before saying goodbye at school. This felt different.
Night Drive
Her dad’s old ‘55 Dodge Lancer sat beside Harold’s truck in the cinder block garage—cracked seats, mouse nests in the vents. It still reeked of unfiltered Camels.
Princess Diaries No. 12: Nancy Jean
that this is how / the dead come back /
to have a chat
The Sheep and the Widow
But don’t you worry about gossip, sugar plum. I have a sense about these things. I can see you’re in love.
The Hot Pitch Under
She could feel the hot pitch under her feet stretching both ways, boundless, like a solid ocean glowing at two opposing horizons.
Seven Minutes
My cousin got a reputation at school, and she said reputations are like ghosts. Once they decide to haunt you, there’s nothing you can do to get rid of them.