work detail

resisting the urge to spit in the fire
and pee in the hot tub

This is why I am billing you for forty hours
instead of maybe twenty minutes.

fifteen yr old non-virgins talking at the bus stop / this is not your mother's grocery list

• The condom broke when
• Brandon's dumb ass 
• tried putting it on. He
• said, "It's ok--we'll just
• get Plan B afterwards," so
• we ended up walking to
• Walgreens. Yeah, you heard
• right. Walked all the way
• there. Plan B? Shit's fucking
• expensive. I don't got the
• money for that. Brandon?
• You kidding? He didn't buy
• nothing, not for me. Whatever.
  
  
• I hear
• you can eat a whole bottle
• of vitamin C instead.

An Extremely Cogent and Insightful Critique of Contemporary Economics

they say more new jobs
will help every-one

a job's just a thing
that needs to be done

oh please, southwest punk rock cowboy
push your hair back and balance yourself
that single earring is throwing me off

Pubate

I would climb an oak with woven mittens

to prove that you undoubtedly fit inside me.

Your monocle is pleasing and my white

shorts are arbitrarily white

with blotches of redwood from hysterical

snorts at your vocabulary.

I would have been deeply in this hobbed

tree – burrowed into the rotting wood like

a wrecking worm. I wanted to you, so,

to hold my sticky feet inside your hands like

you would a small dead humming bird

but if you were to crouch, I

 would need a decade of forgiveness. 

Bend

It's almost the end
Flying round the last bend
I should feel compelled but I'd rather pretend
I'm a lily
Brainless yet beautiful still
I'll bloom and I'll sway and I'll wilt at your will.

today I saw
the prettiest apple
it did not stay shiny but rather
oozed as I sunk my teeth into
its thin skin
I could've
carved my name into that skin
peeled it off piece by piece
laid the pieces out to dry
cut the body open
hid the seeds for a much lonelier day than today
I could have
if I hadn't swallowed it so quickly
and threw away the core

educated guess

That's all I had then?
Those journals,
all that I had then.
Find me, then and
how is it you
can still hide.

---

Matter is a real thing.
Hard enough to imagine
that most of it
remains out of reach.

---

It must have been
something I had wanted
before.
It must have been alive once.

on the closure of a certain deli by the NM Environmental Department

the smell this summer
first wafting lazy by the slicer
it meandered by the fridge
near the bottom, we scoured
in vents and shelves and shafts and crevices.

the search was inconclusive.

the tuna packet was damaged
no one checks the orders
it was in a box
what's in the box?

maggots.

i hate the number ten
and I have never felt
one way or another about numbers
but I loathe the number ten

however the number nine
reminds me of sugar and
of fog creeping up from the ocean and
of barefoot surfers and
and.

The Woods

1.

A lamb followed Mary to school today. Our school is in the woods. The woods are not a safe place for the lamb. The lamb is not safe around us. 

2.

We take turns butchering the lamb in the school's butchery hovel. We find the lamb's stomach full of grass and grass.

4.

It was a very peaceful lamb.

5.

Under our knife, it's skin parted like the red sea.

 6.

During lunch, we snack upon the little lamb, which we named Seth. After lunch, it's back to our studies.

7.

Walking back into the woods after school, you say you miss Seth.

8.

Seth is a part of you now. He'll never get out of you.