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Poems from OBIT

Death is our common ancestor. It doesn’t care who we have dined with.

Poetry and Ambition

American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition.

Polyamory

Cory only hires stoners so he has something on them if they try blackmail.

Pond of the False Prophet

Under Saint Peter’s Gate, I put good foot after bad, and derided, I chased.

Portrait of the Cartoonist as a Woman

My mother taught me to rebel within the boundaries of acceptability.

Possessions

I was nagged by those boxes from my old life stacked in the garage.

Prank and Other Poems

cannibal chowder and a kiss by the splashing voices of a pool

Prayer Before Turning on the News

God, I need to know what happened to those who tried to cross.

Praying Naked and Other Poems

Forgive me, please, for continuing to believe that roses are beautiful.

Pretty Parts

“Tell me about the things you can’t tell me about when I’m dressed.”

Primal

All of this leaves me floating in seas of prehistory and indeterminacy.

Prime Green

We would just roll down the old biology road like all the other suckers.

Prime Green

A world of adventure awaited, a world of beautiful, available women.

Promise

What felt like sanctity now felt like nothingness, like death.

Promises

He folds on himself like a sheet kicked off the foot of a bed.

Pryor

He smelled like the bars my mother took me to in the middle of the day.

Publishing in the Digital Age

There’s this cool magazine online. They let people read it for free.

Publishing Partners: The First Eight Books, 1970–1985

They don’t dance but simply monitor our movements, like bodyguards.

Quieter Than Water, Lower Than Grass: Growing Up Afraid in Russia

“Why don’t you say anything, people? These thugs are murdering me!”

Quiver and Other Poems

It wasn’t the bees I thought to tell but wasps the evening you died.

Rain

You can call it karma if you can see that far, or joy-begets-sorrow.

Rainy Season

The transformation of their maid from shadow to sexpot thrills Maizie.

Reading from His Story “Screenwriter”

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

Reading from His Story “Screenwriter”

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

Reading Henry James in the Suburbs

She had boyfriends before she met him. Well, not really boyfriends.

Reading Her Poetry

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

Reading Her Poetry

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

Reading His Poetry

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

Reading His Poetry

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

Reading His Poetry

She does not know within a decade she will unload a slug into her mouth.