dream poem #1

Under the soft lights of the gymnasium

I asked the fireplace flies

: suck down my pills

I asked of them:

feast on the orange rind

under my fingernails

Then the back of your head

galactic

hidrotic

meet on the lanai

I suck pills and rind

awk. best man at wedding speech intro. #1

so I've been drinking . . .

I mean, thinking . . .

*exposes his penis*

poignent moment #1

how is one supposed to feel when one, streaming a movie via netflix onto one's computer screen at an unorthodox time of night, a movie that may or may not happen to be the movie fletch, notices during a momentary still black movie frame one's own marauded face in the ultra-reflective computer screen, sees for just a half-second one's unshaven, unmoisturized skin, textured with dead cells like sheaves of wheat in a snowy field, and the red sting of a next-day-delivery pimple announcing its presence to the world, a world that happens to inhabit almost exclusively chevy chase?

rejection #1

rejected from VQR. was to be expected. felt nothing reading email. will continue to write in coming days. "life is pain" - a children's movie.

free-write #1

that night the snow collapsed the roof changed in the upstairs sauna and carried away your possessions not least among them the small Japanesey girl who you’d kept locked up in the closet blind and gagged the melted snow as it spread warping the wood and patina purged the lock the lock cocked up and unhinged to uselessness faster than anyone could possibly think possible and she was swept that small Japanesey out on the still-frigid tide fast as anything her gag loosed her blindfold slung low around her neck a lace thong necklace goodbye ma’am it’s been a real thrill so that we’d thought there was God however briefly among us and He knew everything and we knew His displeasure hey carried away too was that Scent of a Woman DVD which we’d been meaning to put in I had really thought that this would be the week we got around to it that this could very well be the week we got around.

writer's advice #1

writers: linger in your work. there is no rush. there is more than enough time. you don't have to get it all out at once. or, if you do, come back to it and fill it in later. describe somebody's face every now and again. talk about the carpet stains and the ice melting in your drink. talk about the texture of the carpet stains, how if you walk across the room barefoot you might feel the stains scrape up against your calloused heel, how it is inexplicably patinated, as if it were comprised of copper, but it is now, it is only mushed ranch dressing. discuss not just the melting ice but the sweating glass that houses it, how glass must have these small holes somewhere in its substance that allows for the half-drops of seeping, frigid ice water to drizzle down its sides, to pool on your end-table, to grease your glass just enough so that it slips from your hand at the most inopportune of moments, how your fallen drink has stained the carpet, how your tongue tastes only bitters.

stop fucking rushing everything all the time. linger like you're listening in on an alien conversation. linger like a new mother. linger like you couldn't possibly describe it well enough. because you probably can't. so hang around instead.