the guild of gilded guilt

every fear is true, you knowyou’ll do the things you hateclean vomit and the blood, the shitsome human — too old, too young, too broke, too drunkdidn’t wouldn’t couldn’t control, and wipe stains off your cuff, oncethey were brains, contained all that were dreams promises broken lend your body to strangers, hoping, wondering whatlurks down … [more]

Firestarter

This day, when the milk carton rips a little onopening, that hernia, not quite repaired, bites whenyou stand, the coffee, “Fogcutter” it says on the baglies or anyway overestimates and dogsgrayly humbled by sudden damp, grumblemelancholalia stops their frantic shrieks to murmursunworth a dart to the glass-fronted door, eventhe mail carrier FedEx UPS slinks boneless … [more]

Yellow Dog’s Ears

Pretty Wife and I were helping clean out a storage unit for beloved stepdad Paul when two sheets, one “NLQ” pin-printed in faded ink and the other handwritten, fluttered out of a box full of things to throw away. The ball point page is in my readily identifiable hand printing; the dot matrix page has … [more]