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He didn’t mind, he insisted, that he loved her more than she loved him.

Somebody would be a lot happier if she were more like her mother.

Spanish men. They whispered and whistled. It made her jumpy.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

I was dusty, my ponytail all askew and the tips of my fingers ran red.

She asked, “What’s the weirdest thing you can do with your body?”

How do our lives disappear even while we’re in the midst of them?

What’s the harm? Will you fight even the healing powers of love?

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Fatwas condoned our arrest for the rouged contours of our lips.

She’d seen snakes before, but she’d never really looked at one, until now.

Euclid stands in front of his lover’s door, open to the last hours of light.

Our ambition was a clawing, grasping thing. It got us out of bed.

They are glorious pumpkin-skinned messengers. I hate them.

And that girls came to his house all the time, cheap girls from the docks.

Love speaks in silence, on behalf of lovers too tired for words.

She looks down the street for Scott’s truck. He’s late but so is she.

“Who is it?” Irina asked at the door. “Open up,” a voice commanded.

Men are so delicate, must be given many portals. I try to be game.

I love it—watching gray light bleed out over the makeshift bed on the floor.

My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.

My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.

My mother is queen of buttons. She shows off the prized ones.

David Lee

If life was exchanged, who is to say it flowed one way?

Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

A sociopathic streak on my father’s side I try to put to good use.

I have so many T-cells I’m afraid of forgetting their names.

You linger in the dimming aftermath, grayer and fainter than a breath.