WELCOME TO ROOM 0014
PLAGIARIST GODS, PEOPLE WHO AREN’T YOU.
The people who are always not you.
Rain
Let me chase fire
on another street
Someone in Paris is thinking of you
No one has been good.
No one has known what I am.
Birthday in Palm Springs
I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you
three wishes, they say. Let me see
the squirrels again, I tell them.
Imagine the Gods
People said his family paid him 6k a month to stay out of Alabama.
Sex & Rage
He got me into communism and in return I got him into being in love.
Internet Princess
Aside from occupations like submarine crewman, Everest Sherpa or space-station astronaut, few professions would seem to lend themselves less to the daily duties of marriage than nightclub owner.
A Sunny Bride
Everyone’s faces were made similar by sunglasses, a kind of easter island stare.
Earth Angel
It was August and we’d hit a patch of perfect weather.
A Long way home
I suggested replacing the womb of a panda with a much larger one from a grizzly, and when Hugh pooh-poohed the idea I doubled down, because there’s no limit to what science can do now and it’s actually a pretty good idea.
A Long way home
“Hasidim!” I said, the way I might have said “Deer!”
A Long way home
Her girlfriend, a former professional tennis player named Jessica Simpson (not the actress). They are a striking lesbian couple who live in Zurich. Both are over six feet tall and use ‘the lightest shade of concealer available.’
Bed Altering Sheets
Time keeps dragging me away from the sound I love.
Why do we have time to think about our bodies?
If you look up
the billboards are sexy and American,
letting you forget all the cruel things
you’ve said to your boyfriends.
There are other things
I need you to remember.
Diet Coke
The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at. Winter lingers on in the woods, but already it looks discarded as the birds return and sing carelessly; as though there never was the power or size of December.
Meanwhile
“What do you find meaningful?” I ask.
“God, French cooking, the way the sky changes from summer to fall.”
Earth Angel
Alex smiled at the woman. Smiled at the baby. She was. Trying to be good.
Earth Angel
“We put ourselves in body bags first,” I said. “Or, no, first we load up on liquor and pills, then the body bags, then we jump.”
A Long way home
Lately, I’ve been into Adderall, noise-canceling headphones, audiobooks about quitting smoking, and TSA Pre-Check.
Groupthink
God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, ‘God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them.” God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch – man created in the image of what? the animals? – the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation.
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
Rocky rooted around in a cloth bag beside him and handed me a tomato-hued flashlight the size of my penis when I was twelve.
A Long way home
