we cast off new worlds in every momentthat unravel and solidify in our wake,where paths split and unwind and split again. possibilities fold over upon themselves,a web of being and what will be,an effluvium of almosts, a tree branching beyond sight,here, see a life where i finished school,and here, one where i fell on a…

let’s pick out a movie from the thousandsbased on no criteria whatsoever.we’ll half watch it,half make out,half pretend we aren’t alreadysaying goodbye. when i look in your eyesi see a young man drowningquietlymouth barely abovethe black rush of a riverslowlypulled downby the weight of everythingyou never asked for. i said back,stupidly,right to your face,that you…

a tiktok influencer screamsget money! get money!at a newborn sea turtlehis abyssal eyeslike droplets of fresh tara flurry of limbsscrambling over sand and seaweedto get to the roaring ocean wavesevery shred of instinct tells himare money.

go, baby, go!run headlong into thicketswhere blackberry bushes grab at bare ankles,over twisted roots,through the sunshine and busted-sprinkler spray,trip along the uneven, patchy grass,then trip and bleed and run again.fill up on memoriesof stick guns and whittled spears,of tag you’re it and running so fastyou swear you might could take off,of the slingshot welts and…

i. invocation come hear these wordsmy dispirited wretches,my nihilistic smokers and doe-eyed sexpots,my dissociating loners yearning to break free,my poets and scribes,my dwindling readers of the written word,my deviants and devils,my blue-haired wanderers,my gooners and sex-fiends,my lovers and dancers,my hypnagogic mouth-breathers,and the rest of you;sit downlog inand get good. ii. revelation this isn’t what you…

​​i. a bucket of hot and crispydouble-battered fried chickenand a cooler of ice-cold malt liquorshared among old friendson a humid august nightwhile the jukejoint shuffle-stompthrobs from next doorrattlingthe clapboard walls.ten times as loudevery time the back door opens.the edge of the swampa main street full of boarded uphardware shopsengines rev and tires chirp.a trucker hat…

the first poems i ever wrote were to impress a girlshe was big-eyed and blonde-haired andshe had just returnedtanned and confident from burning man. (i would later learn this person was not my type,but when you’re young and hard as a steel pennythere is no such thing.) she was crunchy and fleshy andlifted me up…