A woman places an add
on a merchant website,
“full wardrobe for sale:
men’s worn clothes XL,
an engagement ring,
cash only—leaving
tomorrow.”

Three words—eight words, we
slay with hate words or
lay with some plain jane,
without a
care for her name while she's
dressed as a french maid,
waiting for a safe word.

We fake words, like when
we write our papers, or when
reach for chasers, just hiding
cracks behind our blazers.

Let's be earnest.
I mean, let's just burn it—to the roach,
and we'll all toast, pretending like
we've earned it.
Earnest.
Here's to the all the things
we love the most:
here's to blowing smoke and
to doing enough coke to let our
noses bleed. Let's just scream
"**** the masses!" See,
we'll be back, like vapor from the ashes.
Let's be earnest, we
live life, we live it
to the fastest. Clinking
champagne glasses until life
just puff puff
passes.

A million sandlewood candles from
the quick checkout at Sephora
could not mask what we have
done here. Not all the *****
in the world could seize my
dripping mind, which always
seems to pour down the
drain for you and your
stupid ignorant
wild and lewd
cruel and deliberate
enchanting, invigorating—
I sit behind you in math
class and you hold
his hand.
He met me at East 79th
and fifth,
“I think she’s cheating,” he says.
“What a *****.” I say, shaking my head.

Life can be symbolized in the
impossibility of chugging  
champagne from the bottle,
in the half-great, half-horrible scent
of cheap cologne. Life feels like
leaving 3am messages on your
ex’s home phone.

I feel the most alive in warm summer rain,

like when we were lining up jobs, stanzas

and *******.

Life is a small *******
with a Napoleon Complex.
Life is that one lover that takes things out
of context.
         "I am who I am, *******!"
Life is the fact that people can’t buy
Daraprim for what what the price is.
Life is ISIS,
who could ****
hundreds of thousands to
appease a God who
cannot hear them. Life
makes you scream with fury
until you’re purring with calm.
Sputtering like an engine,

until life is gone.

Because there’s something in me
that rattles at my ribs like a birdcage.
For my brother, for former lovers,
and many others.
To remember with a smile what we
usually do with tears.
In an attempt to say the things
we cannot say.
Poetry smells like
burning sage, feels
like grainy leather and
sounds like Mon Coer Est Rouge  in your
friend’s
old, beat-up chevy.
But it feels so right,
it feels like that perfect, eye-rolling
stretch after a long day.
And it has been a long day.