A sharp well-directed blow and
the hollow cranium disintegrates into shards

Each fragment is dealt with
then the whole body is efficiently disposed of

Bye bye Easter bunny

I think I'll go for a walk
To myself I shall mutter and talk
I'll search high and low
And home I'll not go
Till I find the poem I sought

Shocking how the time goes
Like a river it flows and flows
It just disappears
Days become years
Where does it go, do you knows?

He found a rock, the geologist
Whose identity he missed
He thought it was gneiss
But when he looked twice
It was just a piece of schist

They found a bug to eat plastic
Which everyone thought was fantastic
But they started to frown
When their pants fell down
Because it ate the elastic

You think
you sit
on the lip
of perpetua—

though you
exude ****
witless.

The turtles
topple over.

but that handle was made for his hand
hand - handle
handle - hand

the fingers would close
around it to never let go
It had to have flesh around it
at all times
But the blade...
the blade was still naked. He couldn't let
the blade naked
It wasn't fair

"So that's why you stabbed your
mommy then?" the psychiatrist asked him.

"Yes," he said.

"The knife is more important
to you than mommy?"

"The knife listens. Mommy doesn't."

Sometimes, I think
Thinking is weird.
What do you think?

Little Billy said
oh yeah?    wait and see what
i do with sonnets








- fr

Something’s wrong with my poor Mac
It’s acting very strange
It may have had a heart attack
Or else become deranged.

It doesn’t do the things I say
Or function like it should
It wants to go a different way
And that is never good.

I try to save what I just wrote
I press the proper key
But when I try to find the note
It’s nowhere I can see.

The spell check has been smoking crack
It now speaks only Greek
I click it and it answers back
With words I did not seek.

So many things have run amok
I think I need a nurse
To find a cure with any luck
Before things get much worse.

So I’ll unplug it’s life support
And take it to repair
And hope I get a good report
And not news of despair.

I do not want another one
I just want this one fixed
I do not know which way to run
My feelings are so mixed.

If they cannot mend this thing
I know I will be sad
This Mac is not a Diamond ring
But yet it’s not so bad.

At least I know it’s ins and outs
And how to work around them
I just can’t stand it when it pouts      
And threatens me with mayhem.

So I must take myself off line
And miss a day or two
I think that that will be just fine
As long as I have told you.

I’m not the star of any show
Not everyone will miss me
I just want to let you know
So nobody will diss me.

For disappearing suddenly
And not hearting the daily
I’m vanishing quite thuddingly
But I’ll return most gaily.
ljm

“To us, white girls are exotic,”
says my Arab American boyfriend.
At that moment, my brain ceases
to make sense of those words
in that order.
Exotic? White? Girl?
Me? Me. He means... me.
So this is what I say
to my Arab American boyfriend
who has
more culture in his pinky
than all of white America combined.
From what I can tell,
to be white in America is
boring static,
AM radio on a Sunday morning
with a broken dial
on a back road in the boonies.
It is the culture born by everything borrowed but wrongfully claimed
as its own invention.
To be white, in America, tastes like
cream of wheat
with no hope of brown sugar.
It is a tumbleweed-kind-of-rootless
and just as desert dry.
It is colorless, odorless, tasteless—
and will choke you slowly
if you don’t build up a tolerance.
But
if you’re lucky enough
to be white in America,
for about a hundred bucks
and a swab of the cheek,
the Internet can tell you
where you came from.
Even if that makes you feel cultured,
tomorrow you will wake up
and still be
white in America.
To be white in America, I thought,
was as far from exotic
as the self-loathing, middle aged guy
behind the counter
at your local DMV.
But white girls, he says, are exotic.
Perhaps it’s because pumpkin spice
oozes from my pasty pores,
or that “there ain’t no laws
when you’re drinkin’ the Claws.”
Maybe he couldn’t resist the fact
that the Starbucks barista
knows my order
better than my name,
or that my hair blowdries pin straight—
no matter the time of year.
I wonder if it’s the combo of
black leggings, messy buns,
and work out tanks—
or the fact that I think I’m saving the whole ******* sea turtle population
with my stainless steel straw.
Exotic?
Maybe it’s my compulsive nature
to buy in bulk, to pet every dog I see,
and to cry over Queer Eye episodes.
It couldn’t possibly be
the steady diet of rom coms,
my collection of Birkenstocks,
or the apple cinnamon candle
burning on my windowsill
that reminds me of “fall y’all,”
but then again, who knows?
To me, my whiteness is a privilege
that will forever be misinterpreted
as entitlement by every person
who checks that “white” box
on the form
without checking themselves too.

“To us, white girls are exotic,” he says.

White girl is just happy
he likes her in spite of it.