Pluto.3
judged by the way we fall in
love in the bathroom in sweating out the ...
Baffler Archives: Poems
Columns
Long division at the dinner table
Under the windowsill flowers, my father, stark like
math without calculator, sitting so still and nothing
but a blackened gum eraser and little yellow pencil
at table, among the kitchen pastel, a noon window
as I divide big number into big number, add another
line, another mark ...
Song
I wait each night for a self. I say the mist, I say the strangetumble of leaves, I say a motorin the distance, but I meana self and a self and a self.A small cold windcoils and uncoils in the cornerof every room. A vagrant.In the dreamI gather ...
Kirk Franklin Has to Be in Every Rap Song from Now On
I, too, have craned my neck / under a shower head that is not my own / & let melodies from heaven rattle the tiles in the bathroom of a stranger / like the tiles were gently placed there / by my own hands / & I insist on this small comfort / even though I know I cannot ...
Nothing Wrong with a Maple
Go fast, white light, go faster out of sightThe Devil does know how to row my boat ashore HallelujahOrange juice, a swing set, the creaminess of milk ...
Ode to Lithium #419: Perfect
. . . I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse . . . and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.
—Kay Redfield Jamison
I ...
Incendiary Art: The Body
I’ve nightmared your writhe, glumfists punching their way out of yourown body, the blind stumble throughthe buckled vein of your throat asyour nerve endings sputtered and blew.I’ve dipped my finger into a vaporouspool of your skin. The heat blessedyour whole new self with ...
Sorrow Is My Own Yard
What I worship both wartime & pax in low country
is sweat& pay-dirt & death to the tea tax
& any day I want now I can say to my captors
tomorrow, you watchwe’ll be the end of America
& history with horseshoes for ...
Why so angry, Bluto?
Your low frequency growl inspires feelings of dread. You want
to seize the world by its neck, tear it in half with your
tombstone teeth. When you storm down the street, swigging
from a bottle of XXX and punching telephone poles to
splinters, fleeing hooligans dive down ...
All the Answers I Ask
Raymond Chandler, Redacted
the lady discovered kingsley looked harder
in leather discovered a bashful cowboy
a little fawn in sunglasses the lady discovered
foul play and boyfriends of ice asking questions
mr bitter gilded his grill
kingsley spat on a rose
hatless ...
Artemisia Mourns Her Husband
Tattered curtains
drawn her eyes shift
down to plum robes
one shoulder is
exposed—lips red
ready to take
him in. Ashes with
a bit of wine,
he meets her lips
she takes him in—
joined again.
Spoon by spoon he
left too soon she
is consumed ...
After I Die
I am reborn as an animalthat breaks into dental clinicslong after sundown to suck laughing gasfrom its dark mask. I am rebornas an animal that keeps watchon the liquor store until the ...