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 May 2013 kk
Danny C
I learned to hate when I was 10
and studied my flaws first:
frayed and wispy hair,
weak and bony shoulders,
and a smile more crooked
than old, crumbling floorboards,
(a calloused thumb to blame).

When my only few took to rushing out,
like blood from an open vein,
I wasn't surprised: Everybody leaves,
and why wouldn't you?

Soon my house would have
one less body, leaving alone
to sleep in another empty bed.

When I was 16 I tore myself apart
on the bathroom floor at 4AM.
I knew it was my fault
that she didn't love me.
I saw every reason in the mirror.
I chewed my lips to blood and scars
and tore my brittle hair from its roots.

I studied my flaws like a science,
measuring the chips and stains
on my teeth, still crooked
like an uprooted house.
 May 2013 kk
Danny C
I opened up a Men's Health
as awkwardly as I was sitting
in that cold, dry room
filled with cheap leather chairs.

"7 Steps to Being Confident,"
Only seven, he says.
The first read, "Love Yourself."
Not a moment, I whispered Nope,
frightened by my instinct.

I'd like to see you try
I threatened, tossed back
into a memory of a failing roof.

Divorce is a landmine
that twists and tears off your leg.
You'll stand after a year,
but you'll never walk again.

It’s an endless photo album
that you can't keep closed up,
locked away in a dusty attic.

All my wars raged in a single year.
One-legged and trying to run away,
I couldn't dare love someone like that.
"They ******* up, your mum and dad."
-Philip Larkin
 May 2013 kk
Kite
Our sand
 May 2013 kk
Kite
Take me to the beach and tackle me in the waves,
kiss the salt on my skin, brush my bruises.
Bury my feet in sun soaked grains and hold me.
Teach me to surf, teach me to stand.
Run away from the cool reforming sea froth with me.
Quick, it's gonna get us!
Collect the shells and hide them with me.
Help me dig to China.

Build me a sandcastle, with a toothpick and seaweed flag.
Name it after me, let me live there with you.
Let it be surrounded by a moat dug into the sand with your palm so deep that murky water appears. Trace designs on the walls.
Add sea shells for decoration.
Protect it from the incoming tide by building walls of the dark sand you collect from closest to the water, we both know that it's the strongest sand on the beach.
Let's not give up our fight, we will keep building walls around this castle.
We can't let the tide take it, it is our place.
The sun will be getting lower, and the sea more violent.
It will try to break us, but we will dig our fingernails so deep into the mud resembling sand, continuing to slop it on top of our failing barricade to protect our castle.
This is our sand. Determination and desperation on our faces, we will try to push the ever nearing water away.  
The waves will become too much and our hands will be cut from grazing shells and our skin will be wrinkled from the water.
As the destruction crashes in and takes our castle, our sand,


carry me with you.
 May 2013 kk
Jon Tobias
His hat says
I Remember Pearl Harbor
He asks me to put the wine in the basket
Hanging behind his motorized wheelchair

He smells a little like ***
His sweatpants have dark stains all over
Like a leapord who has gone old and grey

"They can put a motor on one
of these things
but they can't make them comfortable"

"When you're an old man like me
maybe yours will fly
but I bet your *** will still fall asleep all the time"

I tell him
that when I am old
I hope they make wheelchairs
that feel like a father's shoulders

He shakes his head after I say that and laughs
"That sounds like it might be nice
But i couldn't say I know what that feels like"

Me neither
I tell him
New Series I think. We'll see.
 May 2013 kk
Jon Tobias
"You've gotten so tall"
she says

"It's only been a few months" I tell her
She looks directly into my mouth as I speak
Her face is different
Hair
Even the way she smells
I can't place it
but it is ugly

"You're taller"

"You drank yourself blind. I haven't changed"

"You know you were a c-section
Cut out like a tumor?"

"I know"

I remind myself
that forgiveness
and being cordial
and finding peace
can often be different things

She holds her elbows out
and my father helps lower her to the couch

"I'm coming home soon," she says
"You're going to have your mother back."

I am leaving soon I tell her
and I am never coming back
 May 2013 kk
JJ Hutton
Bedsunk, hair in eyes, coughing the haunt of a 9 o'clock cigarette, she resigns to sleep.
I'm edges -- rough and looking to let the blood out.
Handful of skirt. I just want to cuddle. But her lips smell like her crotch tastes. Bubbling salt bog water. I'm doing the math. It's basic.
Under the shirt and pulling back the bra, lapping at her sunken breast, ouch.
Red. Smarting. And I never bit it.
"What did you do after work today?"
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