Poetry – swamp pink

MOSHPIT SONNET

February 10, 2026

they keep us on our toes, absolutely we’ve touched where it matters which shape-shifting fool told u that the cruel hoe-bag is alone again dares too sloppy a slob & everybody knows it only crazy ppl have the time listing all the shows they’ve seen no one cares ! some of us have places to be like roombas stuck in corners don’t make me call...

Oh, Enviable Machine

February 3, 2026

I’m convinced I’ll die putting on or taking off my pants. Something will happen ¾ of the way through. My foot will catch. I’ll topple, as the great kingdoms, my dreams of celebrity, while outside, rain smears the landscape into kindergarten art class. And I will curate that moment, as “curator” is the new word for everything, war to wedding. And with these dreary piles of laundry shall I fortify my ruins. It’s a fundamental part of my planned obsolescence. Me and the refrigerator. You and a line...

New Crisis Homily

February 3, 2026

Roughly a quarter of suicides happen away from home, often in hotel rooms. They are “lethal locations.” People who work at hotels know this, but don’t talk about it. It’s not the sort of thing one advertises, but they think about it when going into a room, in that bit of time the corner of the bed and pile of sheets takes to resolve itself. And now that...

[The way you stood under those stars]

February 3, 2026

The way you stood under those stars like it was romantic, like it was like that, like it was. I want it to be how it was. Was it how you pictured it? I want you to name what it was. How high you were and who you were with when it was. Your eyes...

[Listen to this, flies against the thick]

February 3, 2026

Listen to this, flies against the thick panes. Did you know that people had to wash their own windows of the smog? To have clean windows wasto have status, like my sister with allher marriage beads. Both when I started and when I stopped communing with God, I threw away all of my old journals....

Neo-Noir Girlfriend Tries to Replace Me

February 3, 2026

We sit in the dark movie palace, bottle-blonde & conjoined at the armrest. She pulls a black mass from her purse. A gun. No— a wig. Her breath is hot in my ear: I want to be called Anastasia, she says. I won’t bea single syllable. The movie goes: two girls fighting to the death, pow pow, the late 90s hitches like a cola can in the freezer. We...

paper mirror

January 27, 2026

when i write my name with my left hand, i instantly find him there: 6-year-old me, looking back through a paper mirror of sloppy lines, & quirky, anxious-looking letters. there’s a 6-year-old person in our house, & she has already learned how to shape her name perfectly, how to hold a pencil steady, how to notice herself becoming herself. & when i watch her, i’m reminded of the kid inside of me, who was too nice to push people’s buttons, so he pushed the button of a thousand pens instead. ...

Grounds (from “Fingerling Lakes”)

January 27, 2026

Jay likes the dead buildings The boilers groaning like cyborg organs The silverfish wriggling their malignant calligraphy His favorite is the derelict hospital where we pretend to be ill To have beautiful lesions in our brains that make the surgeons gouge out their eyes He’s got his black towels to spread on the gurney Candles from his mother’s bath bomb stash that smell of tortured apples ...

At Bates Mill Dermatology

January 27, 2026

where I spread cheeks in search of yeast, freeze the keratoses, dip my head in liquid nitrogen, send cancer- ous craters to the moon, I’m reminded—sun and fragrance are culprits, browning of the body, peppermint goat soap, the lavender field in showers, every scented ointment, cream and lotion. I tell the doctor everything is natural. He replies, Poison ivy’s natural too. and hands me pristine lists of what should be applied. Vaseline Petroleum Jelly (decades since I used that lube) Vanicream (there was a time, on city streets, men stopped and turned and ogled) ...

SWITCHBLADE

January 27, 2026

grand jury refuses to indict ham sandwich throwing itself at federal agent jailhouse snitch sez she was offered pills a grand piano for favorable testimony her husband is a baby he went to hell jefferson market clocktower where we bump, tickle the wire thick scrotal sacks mulled over for days

CONTRAPASTORAL

January 27, 2026

When you find me prone, enumerating  mosses or observing  a banana slug’s trek  up redwood, know I’ve turned, sighing,  from the great works  of men, dumped like the moldering couch beside a county road;  renounced language,  all misunderstanding;  shook off the cobwebs of names. So little of  me isn’t plastic, glass,  concrete. What am I,  on my knees, without the squawking I took     for words? A dragonfly  hovers here in the air,  ...

“Come to Ottawa. It’s Serious Fun.”

January 27, 2026

I remember everything. The house. Woods. Creek. My car, egged. Things I never told my parents. Sounds of a coyote killing a rabbit in the dead of night. My body drive-by egged off Gentleman Road on Halloween. The kids on the bus in elementary shouting I was gunna blow them up. And if not me, then my brothers. A hand-drawn picture of a gorilla passed around in...