(redux)
We on the hippie trail,/ riprap, heart beat/ There is fear and striding shadows/ far off in the Pacific a tugboat whistles/ I couldn’t camp beside your bed/ the stars like diamond drills/ (don’t say it’s In. Your head)
My father, notorious for always trying to find short cuts, made a wrong turn and ended up in the red light district, where we were blinded by a billboard of a woman in a thong bending over. We covered our eyes and my father laughed. “Gotta see how the other side lives.”
We kissed, embraced. I thought of her in her fish-net stockings. Crawling around like a crab. That’s what I was. I wanted some linguine to go with my bitching and moaning. She felt like a goddess against me.
I deluded myself into thinking that if I stared long enough at a girl and looked away at the moment our eyes touched the universe would tilt and form a symbiotic type of osmosis, melding us as one and removing any responsibility of asking her out or being vulnerable if I was rejected.
Best of the Net Nominations 2026 Well, it's that time of year again. The time when I get to review all of our publications from July 1 to June 30. That's the fun part. The hard part is trying to evaluate them and decide who to nominate. This is an impossible task, and if I'm… Continue reading October 3, 2026: Best of the Net Nominations 2026
...Stacey, really the only one I ever loved but she loved anxiety better and Xanax and anxiety because it’s the ride she tried but still, I miss her because she understood things no one else did and her mom was really cool...
When mama can’t muster herself to serve the situation; when the steam from mama’s sadness makes her weep mustard; when it was all hotdogs everywhere anyway, and when she weeps My heart isn’t close enough to heaven.
The biker lit a cigarette and one for the young woman off a Zippo with the words Jack Ass engraved on it in cursive. He tapped the lighter against the thigh of his blue jeans to click it closed like he was the star of a Hollywood movie. These guys came through town like riding motorcycles was something special...
Wish me down tiny and tuck me/ nearest your iambic pentameter/ ratchetting up to spondees as the tattoo artist/ through beautiful pain, paints you/ with koi fish and cherry blossoms/ until you’re a haiku waiting to happen.
He asks me if I ever think about moving back home, like the house is still there, waiting for us to open the front door and step in dripping wet from the rain. He asks me: “What do you really do with things you can’t fix these days? Do you, like, throw them away?”
