Explore

I used to be known for the humor of my music, the lightness of touch.

Every life is an imperfect continuation of another.

A heart takes precautions, withholds warmth, but it’s mistaken.

My first suicidal ideations occurred to me when I was ten, eleven, twelve.

As soon as her grandparents left, BLAM, the dance in her died.

Here I am, king of the gods, making a fool of myself just to get under your gown.

Better to be a bird without altitude. Or to get out of the game early.

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

Our crowns are made of dead hair and get swept out with the trash.

All down my street the new fathers beat the kingness out of the kings.

Her sly smile was a vicious remnant of her life before Real Life began.

All I know is not in front of me, my sweet angels.

I played a game I called ocean, resisted my need for air.

For a moment I had the delicious feeling of fitting in without even trying.

She had learned that it was easy to get Sylvi to do things.

The dead man’s suit coat
 is a good fit through the shoulders.

I am not prepared for postwar Freetown. Postwar Sierra Leone.

If angels were made of music, surely they would vanish.

The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.

Certain elements of isolation were built into the design, given the odds.

Someone’s walk is pretty much who they are, from the beginning.

Carte blanche is bodily as chalk on dark asphalt, so enliven these eyes.

As far as I was concerned you need never have been my father.

I keep waking up on the edge of the black lake. He’s on the other side.

Her previous existence seemed unreal, now, a faint rumor.

I was bold, even reckless, in what I wrote, and in how I wrote it.

I was happy I had no one to talk to, to be alone. Happy to be in the hospital.

The child at the rummage sale— more souvenirs than memories.