Note
from you
yesterday.
right-leaning hand,
halfway to escape;
mail from the grave- so you.
map to cash, rules to live by.
I burned it all; fed your gray urn.
Come spring, I’ll quarter you to far woods,
so you can’t find all your pieces again.

Chain-link clatters,
her small pickup nosing through.
We’re here for a refrigerator,
her new apartment,
first time I’m meeting anyone in her family.
She’s beautiful,
nervous in the passenger seat,
told me her brother used to be a skinhead.
Now: better, odd jobs,
an Asian wife.

Sparse walls, half an office building
pretending to be a home.
A baby crawls on the kitchen floor.
Mei: tired eyes, lipstick,
business suit, late for work.

Her brother just waking up,
empty malt liquor cans,
talking too fast,
about jobs, about not sleeping.
I’ve seen this math before:
people who struggle to get their life straight,
their day straight, their time straight.

The fridge is light as air,
a few condiments rattling inside.
We slide it out:
black square on the linoleum.
The square bursts,
roaches bloom and scatter at my feet.

Thinking: pick up the baby.
Mei already has her,
no expression,
like this scene’s happened
a hundred times before.

"We’ll keep the fridge outside,
- just a day,
use boric acid, no smell."
I smile when I say it,
like I’m just talking about a squeaky hinge.
Inside it, insects crawl around the compressor.
My girlfriend looks away, down.

Fifteen years from now:
A faraway post online,
in memoriam,
her brother beaten to death.
The baby, the family, now
gone from the map of my life.

Only the black square remains,
still crawling
in the back of my mind.

You smiled
like I was worth the wait-
or the lie.
Couldn’t tell.
You left the kitchen light on too long.
I stepped inside.
The floor gave way.

I slept beside you
as a thief
-quiet,
not for comfort-
but for the hush
that comes
when no one asks
what you’ve done.

Your shoulder
held the part of me
that still wanted
to be forgiven.
I kissed you
like confession
with no priest,
no promise,
just heat and teeth.

You didn’t flinch.
Didn’t ask what made me
this way.
Didn’t try
to fix it.

I’ve burned names
like receipts.
I’ve swallowed shame
like spit.
Walked out
of too many mornings
with hands that still remember
who they touched
and didn’t deserve.

But you-
you just set a cup beside the bed.
No questions.
No sermon.
Just water.
Just presence.
Just mercy,
without the bow.
I drank the quiet.
It didn’t heal me,
but it stayed.

And when you sang-
not loud,
just soft enough to hold the air.
you said my name
like it was still mine.
Like it wasn’t
something I’d dropped
on purpose.
Like it could
come back.

Mortgage-bruised pilgrims
linger along Silver Strand,
pop caps against plywood boarding,
edges furred with salt-rust flakes
from storms that chewed the pier.

Seabee retirees
swap tide updates on porch steps;
third-generation surfers
stitch wax into their palms
and still call this south jetty 'church'.

Here my son and I rinsed sand
from our ankles with a garden hose,
him shrieking, laughing, shivering
when cold bit his feet.

I once yelled at him, raging
for dropping keys into surf,
as if that mattered more
than a day of chasing, wrestling in the tide.
He doesn’t remember.
I can’t forget.

Now, he’s taller than me,
vanishing downshore.

I stand outside, voices rise
in the salt-hard wind.
Barbecue smoke drifts
from driveways, tailgates,
settles into dusk-lit lawn chairs.

Boarded bungalows peel to raw board,
splintering porch rails;
nails weep orange along the grain.

A bike frame, chainless,
reddens into memory beside dune grass
still gripping sand.

There is grace in forgetting:
a tide lowers its voice,
sand swallows what was said.

Take an aspirin and shave for the show,
drink black coffee, rehearse the grin.
For office light's embalming-glow,
take an aspirin and shave for the show.
Staple the tremors, make blood flow.
Bleach out the sweat for the boardroom spin.
Take an aspirin and shave for the show,
drink black coffee, rehearse the grin.

We woke to laughter and breaking glass.

not hers, not mine, not morning yet.

The ceiling blinked a single eye.

A moth drew circles on my chest.

Outside, a streetlight peeled its skin,

blue steam hissed from its broken throat.

A train passed through the bedroom wall.
a hiss, then cabled rolling float.

last night was full of paper moons,
of bitten spoons, of matchbook lies.
My pulse made bargains with her skin,
her hands spoke truth her mouth denied.

I drank from bottles filled with bells.

Each swallow rang a darker note.

She stitched my name in spider silk

and pinned it in her winter coat.

The carpet blooms with cherry pits.

A handprint shimmers on the sink.

The mirror mouthed a warning once,

but I forgot how not to blink.

I gave her maps I’d drawn in ash,

each road a lie, each city torn.

She read them like a child reads stars,

the kind that die before they’re born.

She left no rope, no cage, no nail,

just shadows folded under wings.

I walked into the hallway’s mouth

to hear a single echoed string.

Some mornings take a different shape,

a wristwatch ticking in the trees,

a flame that speaks in borrowed words,

a bed unmade in seven keys.

Was it you who called me?
The message never played.
Another year is passing,
your letter never came.

On the step you pulled me close,
your skin was cool with rain.
You crossed the line I dared not touch,
complicit all the same.

They warned me love was treason,
they burned my home, my name.
I slept there in the ashes;
your letter never came.

Now I kneel in silence,
your picture in the frame.
You asked for proof I loved you-
the letter never came.

The tractor coughed diesel,
choking on enlistment.
Pappaw watched,
relieved he won, without a fight.

I dug potatoes.
Hated gnats, the stooping,
dirt worked into my soul.
“We can’t eat what you don’t find.”

I carry his voice,
like gravel.

When I’ve had enough of soft things,
I take it out,
to hold my ground.

Plywood braces windows,
palms rattle fronds against siding.
gutters spit as the wind climbs.

My grandfather on the phone,
his voice a flicker in the storm’s static.
The lot crowds, then scatters.

A ball, caked in sludge,
drifts into the gutter,
a dog leaping after.

It’s hard to tell laughter from siren,
shouts from wind, or hold his words
no matter how tight I press the receiver,

its plastic warm in my hand,
cord twisting at my wrist.
He calls because the Gulf is darkening,

because he knows the water climbs,
because I have spoken of moving west-
a desert- another gulf between myself and family,

closer to safety, farther from familiar.
Land ought to hold steady,
not wash out from under you,

he says, not telling me to stay,
not quite telling me to go.
As he speaks, the clearest sight

is the aluminum door straining,
blinds clattering like bones, then thunder-
a crack like plaster, like bone, its greyness

everywhere the air will go.
This beginning is weight-
pulling me west, to where

his universe bends uncertain.
In the pause between thunder
and his drawled breath,

not the words
but the weight
he meant me to carry.

Living half in memory
stitched with fragile thread.
Waiting on replies
to pledges never said.

Held the hands of storms,
drunk on joy and fear.
Kissed through rain,
like lovestruck fools
when endings felt too near.

left some names behind,
held a few too close,
one who lit the match,
one who loved us most.

Barn wood creaked
under a blistered roof.
Cicadas rasped like torn zippers,
gnats frenzied in heat-stung hush.

Pappaw’s tools stood like deacons,
rakes, blades, shovels,
a rust-bitten vise
clung to the bench like a wounded jaw,
bolted there decades before I was named.
Its grip slick from the sweat
of every hand that disappeared.
The dust smelled of grease
and something sweeter,
like old rain
hidden in burlap.

Out back,
the wheelbarrow slept
beside the seed spreader,
its mouth open as if to confess.
I built stories in those shadows,
called it a castle,
called it a ship,
called it the edge of the world
before I knew what endings meant.

I was a boy
who heard grief in hinges,
saw narrowed eyes
in the heads of railroad spikes,
spoke aloud to heroic hammers
like they might answer.
I named everything
before I knew
what not to love.

It wasn’t make-believe.
It was how the world arrived to me,
in stories,
in gestures,
in objects
aching to speak.

The *** leaned inward,
as if listening.
The seed spreader waited
like it still had something to offer.
The wheelbarrow, tilted,
cradling sleeping rain
and maybe me,
once.

here we know the teeth
here we show the marks
from lying underneath
what wants us in the dark
 
you shame and curse my name
in safety of the day
then pull your velvet drapes
and beg for me to stay
 
we claw and gnash in heat
and tear at tired skin
through bone
and blood
and meat
to taste the drug within
 
others cannot sleep
we bend against these walls
we grow
and swell
and creep
our scent hangs in the halls
 
you cry for noise and rain
to wash away your fear
you kiss your saint of pain
and drink her ivory tears
 
refuse all gods and kings
and move across my floor
you are my everything,
my queen, my child, my *****
 
press your hips to earth
reveal the peace within
begin the warm rebirth
of flesh
of life
of sin

two minute, thirty second read-time

1.
The head stank of fryer grease,
onion left too long in the sun,
sweat soaked into its seams.
Etienne Boudreaux, ‘Ebo’
to everyone at Tiger Roll,
pulled it down,
one eye watering,
the glass one fixed,
cold and bright as a marble.

"Everyone takes a turn," Boss lady said,
"-record is three minutes thirty."
clipboard scepter of the prep room,
polo shirt crisp, androgynous,
in the fluorescent buzz.

Outside on Magazine Street,
autumn leaves skittered with plastic cups,
Saints jerseys lined up for combo trays,
children sticky with hibiscus snowballs
waiting for the mascot hunt.
The sushi boat golf cart revved by the curb,
its speakers spitting static jazz.

Ebo bolted,
dodging the crowd,
a flapping brush of faux fur at the legs,
the heavy cork molding of its chest,
giant red tongue flopping from its mouth
bouncing with each lunge.

Stumbling past a busker in the square,
The plaza a haze of fried shrimp and beer,
stoops littered with jack-o’-lanterns,
their grins collapsing into mush
pigeons scattering with refusal.
For a moment he thought
he might break free.

Then the chopstick, equaling tranquilizer,
slammed his chest, emptied him.
"Two minutes fifty-six!"  Jasper grinned.

2.
On the St. Charles streetcar,
the duffel slumped in his lap,
the tiger’s stupid smile
jutting from the zipper.
His glass eye caught the window’s glow,
unblinking while the other blurred with tears.
The oaks along the square
rushed past, black against amber sky.

"Is that yours?"
The woman asked, radiating.
Lafayette Street tilted.
She led him away.

3.
Her apartment was a jungle-
walls tangled with vines,
green jars of pressed leaves,
plush animals stacked in ranks on the bed.
They did not look soft.
Their button eyes glittered like coins
spilled from a grave,
awaiting a verdict.

She crowned him with the tiger head,
tightened the fit,
her pupils wide with hunger.
One hand on his neck,
the other sliding inside her robe,
"You are the most glorious Shere Khan."

In the mask,
he believed.
The plush ranks shifted-
armies kneeling,
a kingdom bowing.
ascending was a Demi-God.
Her body arched under him,
her voice breaking on the name.

But he wanted her mouth.
He wanted his own skin.
He tore the head off-

and the slap cracked,
hard enough to sting his glass eye.

"What are you doing?"
she hissed.
Her robe rose like a curtain.
"Just go."

He fled into the night.
Loyola Avenue slick with leaves,
canal water sour with rot.
He raised the tiger head high,
a skull to be flung into the dark,
banished.

But the deposit.
Always the deposit.

He stuffed it back.
The plush eyes of her army
still on him,
the tiger’s grin
fixed, laughing
watching from the bag.

Dawn trembles the glass-
in stillness, a split:
shadow knotted to bone,
light breaks forward.

In my yard a house sparrow-
one wing bent up,
the other folded under-
the body decides.

Ordinary in death:
storm, wire, hunger.
No trumpets, no song-
just the drone of flies.

I reach for the light,
palm raised;
my shadow carries the bird.

I apologize for a world
that could not keep you.

I apologize for the rapture of ego
that left you.

If we must speak of deliverance,
I want a god with no promises,
no threats, only this:

a shovel,
a tree,
and someone
to do the digging.

i never wanted to invade-
do you really believe you’re so special?

no one leaves their planet
unless the planet is a black hole’s mouth.
you only warp for another sun
when Krellpoint is spinning apart.

no one puts their spawn in a saucer
unless the empty blackness is safer than the crust.
no one spends lightyears in a mycelial freighter’s stomach,
chewing orvac resin,
unless distance is safety.

my nestmate, who once tangled me breathless
beneath the humming fusion spire,
now clutches a fading picture of our spawn.
her limbs thinned, her carapace dulled,
thorax trembling with night-terrors-
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

and still these failed-sapiens say:
“ugly blue tax burdens,
sponging off the system.
they smell like burnt toast,
they broke their home,
so now they squat in ours.”

the peltless chimps hiss behind fences,
afraid of their own shadows
yet sneering at ours,
as if survival were a crime.
NIMBYs shrieking loudest,
as if an alien nest
would devalue their lawns.

their scientists bullied by autocrats,
their people split into tribes
that claw at each other in the dust.
you’d never choose to live among them
unless you were very, very desperate.

but a holding cell in Area 51
is safer than a city of fire.
they call this an invasion?
i call it survival.

home is a collapsing sun,
home is a nebula of famine,
and anywhere, even your Walmart parking lot,
with its gum-stuck asphalt and buzzing lights,
is safer than there.