my sister’s face crumbles when she cries.

that’s how you know it’s coming.

before a single tear falls,

her face will crack from the outside in,

her eyes covered in a mess of squinched up skin and eyebrows and lashes.

she can’t control it-

her lips curl back to expose her teeth

and she falls apart.

it’s the calm ( Read more... )

a friend of anna’s is having a crisis-

a moment of existential angst because

she’s daily losing hours and dollars

sitting in a lecture room

learning nothing in particular.

so she stopped going.

i learn this sitting in a classroom,

bored,

listening to a crusty old excuse for a

poet

tell us our work is garbage.

he has fish on his shirt-

bass i think-

and he ( Read more... )

forty-eight miles now separate me from Rhode Island.

routes and turn signals-

forty-eight miles of traffic and merges between me and Providence,

but it’s never far enough.

little bits of Ocean State keep crumbling into my coffee,

molecules of the “who”s and “when”s float to the surface

and leave a ring around ( Read more... )

they met on a friday evening-

the night he was planning to blow up a hotel ballroom.

she leaned one foot against the wall outside

and puffed a camel light.

“you don’t know the first thing about making an entrance” she muttered

as he began to creep silently through a rear doorway.

put her cigarette to her pretty red lips and smirked.

if it hadn’t ( Read more... )

daydreams couldn’t keep me away,

command my attention more than

imperfect thumbs and sunburnt skin.

1 2 3

1 2 3

keep me occupied and levelheaded,

like waking naked in the same position we drifted off in,

head in crook of shoulder

1 2 3

breathe in smell of hair and neck

2 3

1 2 3

you squeeze just tight enough for me to know you mean it.

count my ( Read more... )

i think the shadows were made for us love.
the narrow cramped corners in crowded apartments and bars,
the places only people who are breaking the rules like to go.
we always end up there somehow-
at that spot where it’s almost ok to let my hands linger and
that moment when i’m almost too drunk to care what i’m doing.
those shadows keep calling us ( Read more... )

an interesting angel to say the least.

one who jumps off street signs at oncoming cars

just to feel them pass right through his stomach.

logical seraph

who subscribes to the religion of reason

and moral law.

a line drawing

blurred around the sharper edges.

he’s all perfect angles and pretty curves-

diving headfirst into alleyways looking for ( Read more... )

and he said “between you and me

i love a lot harder and with a lot less regard for myself

than most people.”

i grimaced through a smile,

glanced at the clock:

12:22 am.

“i know.” i answered,

coughed softly so the silence wouldn’t seem so dense.

he closed his eyes and jumped off the same cliff I did-

(the one where lizzie maguire valentines and ( Read more... )

4th straight day of rain and i’m beginning to wonder if the grass and trees are going to make it.
it’s dark.
i haven’t seen a stranger crack a smile for nearly a week
and wet socks are my only company at home-
wet socks and a grim silence punctuated by the anxiety building like a storm cloud in my chest,
constricting all air passages until further ( Read more... )

my lousy attempt at a prose poem.  for class...again.

the apartment always smelled like Eggo waffles and cigars; a pot of coffee brewing on the counter, a bowl of fake fruit on the table.  this is how i remember you.

you used to tell us you were a ballerina when you were younger.

“i had a tutu!  it was bright pink!”  you’d insist ( Read more... )