Word-Smiths

snatches fish from the bottom of the sea: down the hatch without a sound, son of cod, kill the clown, peanut butter and jelly fish, she swallows them tip to tail.She spouts like a whale, she hisses and steams, sputters like water on a hot wood stove, mutters and swears at the gods and men who never say quite what they mean.Rats rummage through her belly, I'm a closet, she thinks, an old bag; she slaps at their scrabble and chew. They don't scare easy; she knows they're getting closer to the edges of her soul.You never know what's next.What's next are night-stretched shadows on a crimson lawn. With bones like blubber, so tired of the job, s...

i.my darlin’ pulls up a bucket of blood from the well, and he says shucks, ain’t this just how it is.   the red sloshes up over the curled lip of the pail, sprinkles his shoes.  i say it’s a long time comin’, ain’t it and he doesn’t even look at me when he says yeah, it sure is. ii.late at night, i am wide awake, and my darlin’ is too, even if he’s pretending to sleep.  the night is bright and blue, and the hayloft isn’t warm, but it’s soft, and in the pale glow of april, the bright song of frogs drowns out that he is just barely crying.iii.the next day we have to cut the bot flies off the horse’s legs, and my darlin’ is three down be...

i. color in the spaces between my freckles; it's a challenge in sunlight. i can't help you, can't help but feel ticklish. crush into me like taffeta and my gaze won't distort now or ever. connect a few stray dots, you're not drawing but spelling all the sweetest rumors. if i trace the sky around you, will it steady, or, like pluto am i lost?v. codependent, lately. bring my knees in closer yet. it's always cold, i thought my embers would be kept. shiver, breath in slower motions; i was rays of sun for ages, where did i misstep? striations etched into my brow, they feel immense when i go out.x. coda: underneath the network breaching, i will ...

I have some questions above my pay-grade. I understand we haven't talked much lately but you promised me an open door policy and I want to take you up on it.All he wanted was to play baseball.That's it.His mom goes to church and serves lunches to children, his father's on base, no longer deployed. And he's a child, you know. I figured that should check off all the boxes.I know we're made to question, not necessarily ask why.But all he wanted was to play baseball.You assigned him a word that he can't spell, except phonetically, maybe something like loo-key-me-uh. And with each syllable he gets worse.I am used to seeing dandelions wilt past ...

I haveI haveI have and I am smalland I am four letters vomiting my heart into the sewer grates wishing I could carve it out and fill up the hole with the burning ice I down until the sobs no longer threaten to line my face and melt my eyes right off and I amwalking halls of mirrored glass curved into lies andbending my reflection into snakes while asking for a fare when I just want the sky above and open airand the confidence of knowing that when I wake in twisted sheets from begging him to unstab the barbs lodged in my skinI can still scream

Living with GAD is like going about your life in a game of Pachinko: you just greet the day and never land where you’re supposed to (what you’d planned for), but you know the bottom row is at least the bottom, and you know how many places there are to land (and maybe you’ve spent a little too long on detour strategies for each possible deviation).You know with today as an opponent, your turn won’t last longer than 30 seconds - maybe a minute if you’re really trying to will a path with telekinesis - and when your turn comes back, you can just try again. It’ll never land where you want, but in overshooting (over-prepping) maybe it’ll land so...

palm frond   /    sadsong     /     spat seeds of sun    /     see :     pack of rabid boys play chicken with their pride   /     silverspoon    /    blondebang       /      smugmouth     /       smile back in portrait /   refrigerator shrine      /     dinnertime    /    kitchen blade makes way to the neck   /  speaks in vague & subtle recognition   /   leaves with the taste of bitter metallook up    look up     /   is the sky not enough :      bloodorange the threat of moisture   /    i95 static   /   die in traffic   /   radio silence gentle rain    /    griefpuddlewrite a lot about   pain      without so much       as breaking bone / s...

broken bottle of candor, here in the agony of evening we slander our past.it's a pattern of abuses, a wildfire of nooses slipped out of at the last moment, of rags screaming into the night in a fiery rage.there are no cages that can curse us, no way to worsen our stance. bones shattered grow back to be fortresses and you should believe that my middle finger is an obelisk to god.throw a dollar on the counter, throw up just a bit but swallow it. history returns with gross perspective; i might learn if not for blacking out.if it weren't for you i'd never make it home. i have passed the gutter that you found me in more times than i can mutter ...

In the end through the dew-drops rolling down your freckled face you saidlet’s find a place where things cannot ever fall away,– and I just didn’t comprehend.By then I felt only invited as you surveyed the broken map of our historiesso sudden you were so frantic to nullify each valley, to flatten every beating crest we ever climbed.I saw, your eyes divine your blood so urgent to hammer out even the minor corrugations of our pairing.(By then, the cold velocity of each of us had aged our faces and stole our weight)So - when upon the table that yardstick levelled out your eyes met mine (for the last and longest time) and you pointed to a pl...

we stayed at the marina motel but before reaching that quiet displacement, we passed an abandoned amusement park and clouds blanketed the sky to make the moment grey and dead and apocalyptic -- the roller coasters like ruins of pompeii -- and I held my breath in an impulsive attempt to stay on the outside to not die into the landscape.we stayed on the second floor overlooking a small body of water to watch fishers on small docks adjacent to the parking lot, toss the line and wait like the paucity scattered there wait for the land to not stretch so flat and far for the rain to not visit so much for the tourist to come and leave soonerwe ope...