the first time i saw my parents holding hands, i was twenty-three.   twenty-three years of bare bone arms wishing for flesh to be...

one summer, my cousin came back from college & said i had grown into a beautiful girl. i remember because i was peeling the skin off a...

There have always been men who I write home to—as if they were my father. Take Russ, my boss at this one store, in this one town where I...

the children in the new stadium don’t care how famous he is as long as he signs their hats in sharpie. i want to be   the boy collecting...

pain sinks the bones I used to know and rises the tongues I kissed before I knew you.                                                    ...

The living room                                                             half-empty –               space where Daddy’s...

Nobody knows what to do with sad people. I remember this mostly on Tuesdays When my grandmother chews her tears, mopping grief In the dry...

I take comfort in knowing that if the world ended right now, in this very moment, my legs would be bare. There is some value in that, I...

scars encircling her wrist form a bracelet or a handcuff dark shapes like ash dropped randomly from a volcano scattered over legs and...

on more than one occasion, i make my mother cry. drunk at twenty-six, i do not tell her whether she is more garden or greenhouse, but i...

I packed a book of poems for us to read aloud in bed.     I want to hear your voice embrace syllables intended to metaphor the...

dust particles float through the air in a stream of light across the bedroom floor landing like soft kisses on skin (my wretched skin)...