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A simple line of raging wet nearby, how as a kid I pictured the Nile.

I feel them slice me open and tug, then I smell my own innards burning.

Dan Gerber reads poems of boyhood, and from the end of his mother’s life.

Our brains interpolate from surrounding images, fooling us.

Not all his children love themselves. Look at little Adrienne.

My brother could Wichita wheelbarrow like I never could.

In that world I was a fish too eager to enter the nets; here, I’m a river.

A car curved left, leapt the curb, and came at us like the line of a bullet.

You can stand on the edge and tremble with fear or risk your life.

Rebecca Lehmann

insomniacs gesturing in a cave of neon light the narrative of their lives

Two surgeons vaulted over a counter to hold open my incisions.

It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration.

I will tell you about the sick. They are ruthless, they are like Attila.

I will tell you about the sick. They are ruthless, they are like Attila.

When the light failed she listed all the places he might find her.

All I could focus on was if he was going to ask me to date him.

Men came over carrying lanterns and pulled away the chunks of ice.

The sense all along has been that there’s some madness in her.

I don’t know you, I only think of you to ignore how unhappy I am.

We could use our arms to squeeze or hold or load not a gun, not a gun.

She takes her hand to my scalp: eyes close as if tasting lemon cake.

Turns out my body’s a dollar sweet potato, her screen said.

We could have everything and still be hurt.

With cane in hand I felt a twinge of superiority to the crutch people.

The kissed fingerpad touched wet with wine orbiting.

He’d always wanted to kiss her thigh dimples but never dared.

Cerberuses ran in packs, terrorizing drunks who fell in the snow.

The door opened, and Dan stormed in, shouting, “Motherfuckers!”

All my life I wondered what it is to vanish like a ring of smoke.