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no. 81
October 2025

Top Ten Reasons to Dislike List Poems

  1. Feels like a grocery list.
  2. Too many nuts can mess with your tummy.
  3. Cutting out syntax from a piece is cutting off its ability to breathe in time.
  4. Grind Culture.
  5. There was once a child who tried to list everything he saw throughout the day,
  6. Parsnips, milk (2%), sushi rice, Trader Joe’s chicken tikka frozen, roasted ham cold cuts, oat milk, eggs (half carton), sourdough, hummus, spring salad mix,
  7. As he did so, he began to think of each person, tree, car, kiss, crosswalk, gun, gate, gate, hangnail, pencil, tire,
  8. As equal and therefore equally banal. He began to cry at this discovery. He began to cry because there was nothing but lists of floors, buildings, the dead, restaurants.
  9. Turn in graphics to J, submit MS to that one press you heard about yesterday, apply for Brooklyn Museum job, go to Trader Joe’s.
  10. I began the day emailing J to Zoom at 10:30 instead of 10:00, as I had just woke up at 9:50 and wanted some time to go get coffee—only to realize it was actually 8:30, and I had more than an hour and a half to kill. So I killed it by going back to bed, only to wake up at 10:25 and rush downstairs to get a cold brew before my meeting, cursing myself for getting so good at sleeping through.

    1. Sirens, birdsongs, burnt-out beavers, punk alien melodies, marimba beats, a lover’s Casio on the hourly aria, earthworms busting it down to heaven, Frankie’s claw stuck, skyline ripping apart
    2. Fully frontal and folding in on itself

      1. The neighboring chipmunk sought to cheer him up but could not find the right words.

        1. Not only sleeping through, but snoozing them. I snooze everywhere

          1. Bookstores, bodegas, bars that call themselves speakeasies

            1. Most of the time I snooze while awake, and it all comes out of me like

              1. Sirens, Milky Way, kettle, sprinkles, unfold, valley, classic
              2. Ear, canal, odor
    3. Almond powder