Evening

Engine screams break silenceslike ice chips in a bucketand all the flowers she stolefrom the beds out in frontof the shoe store are dyingwhere they’re planted in the dirt.She wears only my shirtas she waters them and bothers themwith all her quiet questions.I guess she isn’t that unthoughtfulabout their time but she goeson and on […]

Immortals

There is a statue of a gamblerout front where all the pigeonsgo to peck at stones and stareout past the slowly fading roadside.This city has a tradition of immortalizingbad luck on forever so no one elsecan make it any better.There is a woman with thinning hairand a gut that she keeps tuckedinside her sweatpants.She is […]

Millennia

The empty shelves are like the ribsof some lost skeleton sticking outof the warm sand in a new desertI have only just imagined.At the oasis they are grilling upsome lizards I have never seen,and the smoke is like a goodbye hug to start with.Artists selling paintings of the landscapeor of people like the womanwith her […]

Brackets

It’s like a white out made of televisionstatic I’m talking old school on thosehuge SD T.V.s. I am walking through the courtyardof an old rundown motel out off some freewayI am trying to escape.There was a frozen water fallin my morning’s fading dreamsleading me to thinkthat all this time has been much morethan what it […]

Negotiations

The middle ground was linoleumwith a single light fixturehanging from a chain.It had decorative glass fixturesfor the bulbs, mostly flowers,and only colorful birds. There were no words exceptwhat they said to each otherover that dark tablewith the chairs that warpedif you shifted your weightin the slightest. It was a place of promiseslike when he swore […]

Covenant

The Blade Runner soundtrackis on a loop on a cracked open jukeboxin the wreckage of one of those nostalgia diners,pretending its the fiftieswhen the whole world can’t rememberwhat they looked like. Some bored kids from the high schoolput that particular track on thereas a protest against the pastwith a dose of the futureno one there […]

Titanic

Grape vines grow like veinsover the surface of a wooden fencethat’s leaned against by herwrapped in the jacket she stolefrom my bedroombefore I woke up. She didn’t want to talkbut did anyway just to maintainthe good energy of the day.I confessed that I’d been lookingalmost everywhere. She said she didn’t careand all the spinning sunglasseson […]