First it’s the good sugar, all babyit's cold outside and warm hands of the loveron your spine. While any fool could seethe trees turning to spindle points,

Before they searched the basement. Before her father unlatched the stubborn door to the wine cellar. Before they found the small form huddled beneath a white blanket.

Christmas Town. What a dreadful, dismal, backwater dump

Have you been?

And what I mean is, have you been since you were small and rather naïve?

We wanted to begin. We wanted to be reborn and die and do all these things at once.

I walked into the dirtiest, saddest, scariest gas station in Baton Rouge.

I’ve always envied people who can remember holidays from their childhood. I’m not great at remembering things. Sometimes I forget to eat, or shower, or brush my teeth.

Toward the end, the grandmother began leaving offerings in her backyard each night for the fox. Her family told her not to; but each time they confronted her about it, she claimed she had no idea what they were talking about.

like would I go back if I could?it has rained for thirty-six hours & I am bored of the present so sure maybe 

“Don’t resist counseling.”“I resist everything but clown makeup and donuts.”

In the picture of my heart’s desire, I am watching “Three’s Christmas,” the fourteenth episode of the second season of Three’s Company, and the only holiday episode of my favorite series.

Their feet stuck to the thin layer of beer that coated the kitchen and mail littered the rug by the front door. They went out only to get milk and coffee and diner eggs.

Crab—because they skitter sidelong—might counter your clockwise.

Pheasant for fear of your luck taking wing. As Emily Dickinson said: hope is a feathered thing.

I love the way Téa Leoni chugs

that martini—shaky, the news

she knows is bad and now believes.

Ryu, bro, what the hell happened

to the dragon punch tag team? My plane

pinballed the globe trailing you, I waltzed

in US airshows & seedy Barcelona nightclubs,

You guess and you guess wrong but Vanna White unzips her gown anyway and from the breach Annie Oakley steps out/she too slipping off her embroidered blouse and from inside her Maud…

Down in engineering you can’t even see

the stars.

Dad was so proud when I was reassigned—

the heart

of the ship, the heart

of the ship,

draw him up in fish netting,

bruise his bloated skin.

silence the green.

He made good on his promise to leave if there were rainbows. So she took off her pink stage wig and transformed to blonde. I cannot wash the Manic Panic out of my hair with even the cheapest shampoo.

I have over three thousand, you know—

brass and crystal, palm-sized, designed

to turn. You can always hear me coming.

The thunk and chime that sounds like

Why are the children in trouble? Darkness

demonstrated far better parenting

than who’s behind these baritone bleatings.

Whispering miserable things, such regress