School Lunch

My father never drank except at Christmastime, I’ve
never seen a brown bottle drain until I was seven, stayed
at my grandmother’s house and knew the skank smell of alcohol, in
winter where cigarette smoke looks ghostly, the
ash tray a black patch of night, he sat on the steps in front

I’m 17, and I am always in love, but never with myself. I eat lunch on a Saturday alone.mI spend fifty dollars on books.
I knit an ugly, mustard-colored scarf.

The tide pools stank of brine and salt. Chunks of rotting seaweed dried out from the sun were stuck between the shallow crags, waiting for the ocean to pull them back out into the sea. The song appeared to be coming from the direction of a cluster of several large jagged rocks.

for wiping her hands into hourglasses, say forget this picture, say wif with more teeth, veil of sand funneling itself into woman: wif.

I gazed at the home, a lighthouse among the static, muted surroundings. I prudently adjusted my hat and rehearsed in my head exactly what I would have to recite to the ingenuous Gilbert family when and if I saw them. As I limped to the door, I felt my stomach retch with uneasiness and heave with discomfort.[…]

Every time I take the 7 Train, relaxing beside the wall, I notice the lineaments of each building with indented violet windows. I enjoy listening to the accompanying passengers’ music. I’m aware of how utopic our sky is. I’m aware of it all.

It was no coincidence that God created Adam first Because Women cannot be molded without there First being a man To create them To tempt them To crave them To devour them Adam’s ribs Were not given to Eve’s bosom Because of his generosity Were they? […]

where can i pull
a kind of madness from—

from perilla leaves?

It is hard to believe how fast time can travel. Before you know it, an on-going event will become a precious memory. As time passes further, these memories will slowly dry, “decay”, as if they’re something solid. No emotions will be stirred up again thinking of these memories.[…]

Courtney sailed through her mother’s Facebook page hastily and yet steadily. This was the act of an expert browser who had seen every corner of that familiar and cherished page a countless number of times and knew where every mundane click would lead to. She knew how many pictures were posted and where, how many status updates there were, her mother’s favorite music, books, and upcoming events. […]

One of the mountains of belongings had seemingly collapsed into the negative space, leaving a sloping pile that scattered out several feet on either side. But amongst the avalanche of things, the hill of hard, solid, tangible objects, was something organic.[…]

on the day the world ends you pray for a portal to open above the teacher’s head, shining deep cosmic blue saying you weren’t wrong, that you deserve better than the ones who say you deserve better than the futures you already predict in cold-handed silence, in the words you read and will read again […]

Harth rem ir Estevan is dead. It is the first time that I have read The Left Hand of Darkness, and I find that I have fallen for the brisk, deep honor of its principal nation, Karhide, and the empirical myth of its glacial world, Winter. In this place that LeGuin has created, an immaculately curated, textured oral tradition sits with craft and tact, unfurling honor clean and easy like butter.[…]

What’s left is
the local newsreels;
the WLTX women staring pixelated […]

i am six when i am called fat for the first time.
late spring, snack time at daycare, two oreos on a paper plate.
a still life, if you will: outside the window the peonies are blooming,
so swollen & violent with the fullness of being. i feel overripe,
too soft, like a cosmos-bruised plum from the supermarket clearance […]