Last night I walked them through the park
to see fireflies racing through a soccer net’s sagging ropes
and spring peepers chirping
beneath drooping, silhouetted leaves. 

She told anyone who'd listen
that she knew every king and
not a damn one of them was
much to look at most days. 

2 My winter coat will no longer button up, I’m solving that problem by picking random cards out of a hat and doing whatever the card says to do. This card says, ‘9 of Diamonds.’

Calm Face 

City bus almost runs me over. Bus driver has calm face. I have calm face. All bus passengers have calm face. We’re all good here. 

Prom in the Year 1999 

The Polaroid her father
took shows me in an ill fitting
tuxedo, my Aqua Net polluted
accidental white boy
Little Richard hair
towering above an acne ridden
face that was too small for its
forced smile 

School Bus Legend 

I very quickly became infamous for my hidden
talent.  At lunch time kids would whisper “It’s
him” as I passed by with my corn dog covered
in wiggling peaches misplaced by the lunch
lady as she beamed at me and gave me extra
tater tots, having heard about my leap to the
top of the first grade social hierarchy. 

Their heather gray epidermis
contains a small percentage of elastane,
ensuring a stretchy fabric
and
the steep shoes of tango dancers form their feet. 

In the violence of your jaw, I found myself
again as your hack-haired friend mumbled
“forgiveness” when “eternity” was so obvious —
eternity we have, to count the broken gestures
of a night, the loving of a dull orange light
lapping over us from a cheap plastic globe