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At Your Back, These Ruins My skeleton feels as though it is trying to jump out of my body, through my back.  There is a stone knot twisted in my stomach and I hunch over to deal with the nausea.  My room is a dimly lit mess of clothes, bed sheets, and water bottles.  It’s been this way for a very long time, and I don’t care anymore.  My mom doesn’t ask me to pick up my mess now; she just walks by the room with her head down, trying hard not to look inside.              This bedroom is like the tomb of a child; wood carved animal trinkets line the shelves and collect dust, pictures of me at Sea World still rest between my el

i hold my head; cradling a cannonball. there is density in the skull, like nebular revolving. i feel the churning weight; flecks of gold and floating dust compress in turning darkness. inside-- a black sphere, a net, a fly trap where flashes catch, a silver web where fibers weave serpentines over obsidian. flashes-- a face with dim features, scantly sketched on granite. a scent bound to memory: perfume, or rain, or sunscreen-- not nostalgic but electric, fumes you inhale hungry, even if they sting. a sound, a note, a melody; noise muffled in remembering; tone and pitch submerged in ink they surface damp, less audibl

familiar stars while on a different planet; the constellations bring my heart back to the home base i forgot, or forsook. the quiet salvo of fireflies neon, volleyed across my lawn in darkening june, when the sky is dimming topaz and my court is painted tones of navy and pine. collapsing onto the body of my mattress, in the hush of a.m. hours, and feeling it reassure me that sleep and dreams are not too far away, and that tonight, I will dream fantastic things. there you were in your pale green sweater jacket, supine on a bed considering words in the book you held, and I there breathless and holding my ow

plagued by a darkness of the mind a state like moonlight glossed upon the surface of black water unable to illume such depths as below

I the sky is bile splashed on mother of pearl, a red ovum lurches over the yolk. your friend calls you from his coma, says he’s still chasing the dragon, but through a sea of milk. tonight the moon is caked in rust.  below you dream you sling hand grenades at houses, before dawn, like delivering newspapers. but soon your streets fill with dark, frothing blood. II cotton battleships cruise overhead. they sail on cobalt, they inch across the dome. morning light buffs their portsides to ivory, the fleet turns to form a crown, a barricade. you drive beneath the cordon. you barrel down street

I. in my room i was sifting through prescriptions littered over desks and drawers, each empty but for dust leftover clinging to the sides—all this like a hundred orange urns opened and upturned; the ashes poured out, and in fever, in madness, consumed. II. my friend last month he fell into a hole and could not clamber out. he swims inside a sea of milk still chasing the dragon around, and i like to think he’s battling dreams; if he wins maybe he’ll wake up. III. one night in bed i heard my friend sing to me from his coma, it was soft and low like breath or wind carried over miles, like a curling m

a vial dream, raw grit, a needle filled with spit and substance churning in the barrel like a high school slow dance, a push, a shove; the swaying blend stolen mid song and plunged out the door, slammed from its tube and shot straight through to hallways filled with blood. a vein, a fist shaped heart, all the pulsing parts grown into the body like a garden; fruits which ripen under bones and beat from stalks that feed them blood— a nursery sheltered in the basket of a ribcage, a system blossoming to keep breath in a breathing frame, but a shot straight through the function would maim the bloom inside,

the sky is bile splashed on mother of pearl, a red ovum lurches over the yolk. your friend calls you from his coma, says he’s still chasing the dragon, but through a sea of milk. tonight the moon is caked in rust.  below you dream you sling hand grenades at houses, before dawn, like delivering newspapers. but soon your streets fill with dark, frothing blood.