“The Sagrada Familia is the most hideous building in the world.”–George Orwell 2026. Projected date of completion. When is a church complete? This is not a literal question referring to…
Author: admin
Whenever I teach “The Raven,” a number of students assume a particular misreading: that the narrator has murdered Lenore, and that the raven of the poem symbolizes his guilty conscience.…
The Mall is Closing I will always get the wrong sweet. It’s not that—it’s not that, but impulse is a high-fructose corn syrup something something razorblades. How about let’s kill…
THE GHOST OF BLOWJOBS PAST Suppose you’re invited to a Christmas party, and when you arrive at the condo lobby something feels familiar, which is strange since it’s not your…
MY FATHER, AS JACK NICHOLSON A man who knows a pretty girl when he sees one, and he’s always seeing one. He reads waitresses’ tags, calls them their names. All…
sharon mesmer Sharon get up be cinema again for long pearly stretches the sky isn’t anything but stars inside the theaters projectors push light through emulsions soon we’ll be peasants…
MEMORIES OF DESIRE I am unable to focus, I don’t want to focus on desires I can no longer feel. Desires for power over a younger, slender guy, a boy,…
Swallowed When I see an escalator I have to kiss everyone on it, don’t you? If you like these pastries—our lawyer calls them perfidy rolls— there are more on his…
AS JAMES FRANCO KNOWS As James Franco knows, Poetry makes me feel like I can create whatever I want, because all you really have to do is express what you…
SUN BEAR yesterday at the Oakland zoo I was walking alone for a moment past the enclosure holding the sun bear also known as beruang madu it looked at me…
THE CHILDREN I feel them falling out of me, the children, like the passage of stars in the sky, the small fire denied by the fierce rising of the sun,…
I WAS ALWAYS TOLD A POET SHOULD ONLY PUBLISH ONCE A YEAR, ON THE QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY AND ON THE SUBJECT OF THE QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY A government program seeks to leave…