HOT WINDS RACED through the canyon, turning the acrid air thick. Desiccated flora spun aimlessly. Creatures lay dead and those dying writhed in agony upon the hard land. Bodies heaved like bellows, tongues flapping over rotting flesh. No man or animal sought inspiration in such turmoil. No thought or habit — good or treacherous … Continue reading Forsaken
I have a little utopia in the middle of an apocalypse I have friends & sesh & fictional escapism I have a palace of mold in a city of unaffordable living I have a sacred space upon land that’s slowly shrinking I have love when all around me I see hate I have unity as … Continue reading Little Utopia
Stems once used as armor, teach me how to harden with tenderness O evergreen perennial.I carry you home with two 40 oz cervezas& some real slim thick incensenamed Renewal. I need to cover the decaythat belongs to the body of yesteryear —the tissue fibers, sinew I tied upin lavender-scented contractor bags.I situated you in the … Continue reading Ode to Bamboo Stalks I Bought at the Liquor Store
Here are Hidden Peak Press' 2023 Pushcart Prize nominees. While Seeking to Understand Her Brother's Death by Camille LebelPainkillers by Julius OlofssonWindmill Tequila by J. Alan NelsonI Miss You, I Love You by Skylar CampDaytime Fireworks by Matthew MersonFrancis The Shards by Michael Dean Clark The Pushcart Prize honors the best poetry/fiction in small presses … Continue reading 2023 Pushcart Prize Nominees
my asshole, and why I keep checking its horoscope why my secret identity is a factory-reject breast pump why I only feel close to my ancestors when I eat an apple on a church stoop the grave I’m digging with a golden shovel, cursing the bend of soft metal why I keep getting blackout … Continue reading My Therapist Found My Poems and Now She Has Questions About
THE KID'S THERE by the door, leaning against the brick wall under the blinking Budweiser sign. Gets deposited there almost every night by his old man. I’m half-drunk. It’s like I never left. Everything’s different. Everything’s the same? Sounded better when Sheri said it in French. I’m not the same guy is what I’m trying … Continue reading A Good Day
I DON'T KNOW HOW to start this, to write it all down, other than to say none of it was planned or simple. Neither was what happened. Nothing ever is. And yet, all the work, my collection of years collecting the raw material and nights lost to the city in search of the perfect spot, … Continue reading Francis The Shards
After four years of working night shifts In gestures of victory and mouthing the word "boom" As the pythons have no natural predators in Florida I will make your sandwich for you By scooping out the bagel's chewy insides When humans started burning fossil fuels Because there was no more room. — BOONA DAROOM Boona … Continue reading Live Your Best Lie
FOR THE PAST THREE HOURS, I’ve been full of gas. And I don’t mean that in a crude way. I mean that I feel like I’m full of compressed air from my pelvis to my shoulders. Nothing really helps—not eating, not drinking, not even farting—except for lying on the floor of the antique store. Somehow, … Continue reading Framing Elvis
And at a family meal at a Roppongi restaurant Where the napkins are origami cranes but there is Western cutlery to show progress My cousins whisper that when I finish I should shout “Gotsan deshita!” which is what gangsters say When they’re done eating So I yell it at the end of dinner the whole … Continue reading My Japanese Cousins Teach Me Yakuza Slang