the truth is, they’re hiding everywhere
My mom took me to a park.
I tried to write you
a country song,
but the words kept sticking
to my chapped lips.
And we both know you never really
cared for music
as much as you did for cigarettes.
Seeking 30-35 y/o male
to spend the holidays.
Left foot must fit
in a size Carlos stocking.
When I throw it
against the rock
it splatters and splashes,
hisses and sighs.
Leaves its mark.
I sink my feet deep into the earth
at the bottom of the river. It feels
like clay, swallowing me until I’m
caked-in halfway up my legs.
Unable to move, I reach down and dig out a handful
of cold, soft mud.
I throw it back into the water.
Its splashes create brown dots on my white T-shirt.
I pass it back and forth between my hands,
sloshing and plopping it as it runs through my fingers.
I squeeze it and it dries like a dishrag,
brown water dripping
back into the running river.
I look at you downstream and wonder if you feel it,
the part of it that is me, flowing past your legs.
I glance back at the rock; it’s covered in splats of mud.
I throw what’s left in my hand
to create one more spot, to hear one more sandy thud.
Then I pierce the river with my hands.
The cold water washes away what’s left of the earth.
I remove my shirt and unbury my feet.
I call to you
sitting on your log. I reach down as you look up.
I playfully hurl a ball of mud at the water in your direction.
Its splashes create brown dots on your white T-shirt.
You smile and remove it. Standing up, your feet sink
slowly into the soft clay that lies below us as you slink
your way back upstream.
I firmly pack a clump of clay in my hands.
We throw and thrust as the earth thwacks and thuds against
your chest, my thigh, your throat, my chin.
Minutes later, we are brown and red.
Spotted with silt, covered in welts.
I hurl one last ball of it at your back.
Then I stop because it stings us both.
We lay down to rest as the rapid stream
runs around us.
And as our hands touch under frigid water,
it all comes clean, the sand, the clay, the mud.
but as I stand to leave the water,
I still feel you in my legs,
my shorts forever spotted with your stain.
If you were born today, we'd kill you by age eight. —Jim Adkins
So God decided to wait a couple thousand years before having children.
He came down sometime in March looking for a virgin.
Found some chick named Mary from Massachusetts.
She said she wouldn’t mind carrying His child.
She went to the doctor for the first few checkups.
She even bought a crib.
But then her boyfriend got upset.
Her parents weren’t too sure about the whole thing.
So she changed her mind.
She just couldn’t take it.
She knelt down and asked that He let this cup pass from her.
But of course, that wasn’t His will.
So one spring morning on a
cold metal slab, she sat down.
And as a doctor reached his small, sturdy hand
inside her to rip Him from a uterus,
to cut that cord, to separate
mother and child,
church and state,
savior and world,
we all felt His pain.
We all fell on our face.
A few minutes later, the doctor removed his gloves,
wrote Mary a prescription.
And with the death of nothing but
a few cells, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.
My friends look at me like I’m inhumane
when I tell them its easy to get rid of stray cats—
shove them into a gunnysack and toss it into a river.
Or when I talk about shoveling up half-digested grass from
a fat heifer after its been
shot and gutted, each stomach hollowed out by a butcher.
They cringe when I talk about the day
you killed my gerbil,
picking him up by his furry, grey tail and
banging his small body against the wall.
One swift whack.
I tell them Smoky had gone crazy,
cannibalistic. He had eaten three gerbils.
He had bit the flap of flesh
between my forefinger and thumb.
I remember one day in the basement of our old house,
scavenging the cubbies in the storage room.
We uncovered your rock collection.
Geodes the size of my skull you had split in half
with a giant hammer to reveal the
sharp, shiny, clear and purple crystals inside.
In the same box I caught a quick glimpse of your other collection.
At first, I thought they were
long, skinny marshmallows.
You told me how when you were younger
you would go hiking with your friends.
You would each take a shovel,
and you would see who came back with the most rattles.
You told me that as long as you snuck up from behind,
you always had plenty of time to slice the snake in half
before he even knew you were there.
It’s always better to slice as close to the head as possible.
Then you would hack off the rattle and bury it in your pocket.
You came in second only once.
I looked up at the rocks, the rattles, your wrinkled hands.
I looked down into the shoebox containing the
few measly, lifeless pebbles
I had begun to collect.
As I clenched a rattle between my palm and my
long, skinny fingers,
I couldn’t wait to break them all open, to see if maybe,
there were crystals inside, just waiting to be discovered.
When my friends give me that look of disgust,
the one I never gave you,
I tell them there was really nothing else you could have done.
Smoky deserved it.
I tell them that I was,
and still am, glad you killed him.
What I don’t tell them is that as I watched you
dig a hole for him in the back yard
the blood still dripped from the two deep
holes in my hand.
I keep you in a green spiral notebook
in the bottom drawer of my dresser.
I don’t ever open you, but I know you’re there.
I can hear you whisper every time the drawer is left open.
I close my eyes and see the thin blue lines and bold black letters
etched into your pale white skin.
Each page of you contains a single sentence,
in your own handwriting,
beginning with the words
I love you because
The reasons on each page are varied, concrete, convincing.
Farther down the page, another sentence in my own hand,
a lie, beginning with the words
I love myself because
The reasons here are varied, faint, forced.
And between the lines, each page contains
A silent sentence, not yet written, beginning with the words
I cannot love you because
The reason is short, simple, always the same.
I know it’s hard to read.
It’s even harder to write.
That’s why I never have.
But one day, I will open you up.
I will hold you down.
I will take a red pen, grip it
tightly in my right hand.
I will press its ballpoint firmly
against the bottom line of your very last page,
and as the pen moves across the page,
you will feel it in your fingers and in your feet.
As I press harder and harder,
it will hurt more and more.
Deeper inside you,
your throat and your thighs.
And you will know that I am writing again.
You will know that
it hurts me too.
When I am finished, the pain will stop.
I will set the pen down on the desk.
I will close you, turn around and place you back in the drawer.
And as the words bleed through to every page,
I hope that wherever you are, you will
walk to a dresser, open the bottom drawer,
And listen as I whisper.
I pray that you will peruse the lines on your skin, as
the words slowly appear, as the bottom line forever reads
I’m sorry
I went to Braun Books
Above the back door—God's hand,
reaching as I read.
Spring break of '06—
A foot and a half of snow.
Only in cedar.
Canyon Park is fun.
But at night, the cops will come
and kick you out—RUN!
Hey, it’s November.
Let’s go to the Shell station.
Free soda means good times.
A "True T-Bird"
Does it count if she's a witch—
The kind that casts spells?
Mmmm. Costa Vida.
Mexican food for surfers.
Good horchata there.
Tunnel—underground
It's real scary in the dark.
AAAAAAAHHHHHH! (Please hold scream for 5 syllables)
Subway, Subway, Sub-
way, Subway. Build one more. Quick!
Maverik’s catching up.
Call me narcissistic, but these are my two new favorite websites:
