troubled heart folded.

I'm not a bird but I'm inhabited by a spirit
that's uplifting me. It's my animal, my saint
and soldier, my flame of yearning,

come back to tell me
what it was like to be without me.

- Chase Twichell, Saint Animal.

I was young once. I dug holes
near a canal and almost drowned.
I filled notebooks with words
as carefully as a hunter loads his shotgun.
I had a father also, and I came second to an addiction.
I spent a summer swallowing seeds
and nothing ever grew in my stomach.
Every woman I kissed,
I kissed as if I loved her.
My left and right hands were rivals.
After I hit puberty, I was kicked out of my parents’ house
at least twice a year. No matter when you receive this
there was music playing now.
Your grandfather isn’t
my father. I chose to do something with my life
that I knew I could fail at.
I spent my whole life walking
and hid such colorful wings.

- Brian Tromboli, Things My Son Should Know After I've Died.

We kept the war under our skins
we kept it in our hamstrings
in our bones.
We kept the war in our cereal bowls
in our juice
kept it in our first love
standing in the porch light
waiting to be kissed.
We kept it close
in the hems of our shirts
our face cream
kept it in our bad skin.
We kept it in our driveways
kept it sitting quiet in the yard.
Flying the Bronx River Parkway, 2 a.m.,
kept it in key rings
smashed into tables,
the imprints they left
on our palms.
We kept it door-to-door,
moss-green in hinges.
We kept it mean
under our fingernails
forgotten in our socks -

- Megan Alpert, What We Kept.

every thread, every hair rearranged to resemble you. you could help her, detective daughter copy, please don't be me. there are so many skirts under the table. none of these long legs are mine. she calls around, finds me crying. wish I were capable of lying, sometimes. hide out, love is hell, hell is love. hell is asking to be loved. hide out and run when no one's looking.

- Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, Detective's Daughter

I crawled through the window and ran into the woods.
I had to make up all the words myself. The way
they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed
through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled
around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made
this place for you. A place for you to love me.
If this isn't the kingdom then I don't know what is.
So how would you catalog it? Dawn in the fields?
Snow and dirty rain? Light brought in in buckets?
I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters
kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart,
the hunter's mouth, the trees and trees and the
space between the trees, swimming in gold. The words
frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce
leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere.
I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor,
pretending I was dead. I wanted to hurt you
but the victory is that I could not stomach it. We have
swallowed him up, they said. It's beautiful, it really is.
I had a dream about you. We were in the gold room
where everyone finally gets what they want.
You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you. Let me take you
there. The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar
cube...We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

- Richard Siken, Snow and Dirty Rain.

1
I watched TV. I had a Coke at the bar. I had four dreams in a row
where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire.
I watched TV. I had a Coke at the bar. I had four Cokes,
four dreams in a row.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding the straw dog. Here you are
in the wrong house, feeding the wrong dog. I had a Coke with ice.
I had four dreams on TV. You have a cold cold smile.
You were burned, you were about to burn, you're still on fire.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding ice to the dog, and you wanted
an adventure, so I said Have an adventure.
The straw about to burn, the straw on fire. Here you are on the TV,
saying Watch me, just watch me.

2
Four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row,
fall down right there. I wanted to fall down right there but I knew
you wouldn't catch me because you're dead. I swallowed crushed ice
pretending it was glass and you're dead. Ashes to ashes.

You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you and you wanted an adventure
so I ran and I knew you wouldn't catch me.
You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening
at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

3
I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything,
couldn't do it anyway,
just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made
any sense, anything.

And I can't eat, can't sleep, can't sit still or fix things and I wake up and I
wake up and you're still dead, you're under the table, you're still feeding
the damn dog, you're cutting the room in half.
Whatever. Feed him whatever. Burn the straw house down.

4
I don't really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back.
So, I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them?
There's a black dog and there's a whiet dog, depends on which you feed,
depends on which damn dog you live with.

5
Here we are
in the wrong tunnel, burn O burn, but it's cold, I have clothes
all over my body, and it's raining, it wasn't supposed to. And there's snow
on the TV, a landscape full of snow, falling from the fire-colored sky.

But thanks, thanks for calling it the blue sky
You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.
I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.
You weren't supposed to.

- Richard Siken, Straw House, Straw Dog.

Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
flames everywhere.
I can already tell you think I'm the dragon
that would be so like me, but I'm not. I'm not the dragon.
I'm not the princess either.
Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
And the part where I push you
flat up against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I'm getting to it.
For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.

- Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out

3

History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a roome he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.

7

What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
Trying explaining a life bundled with episodes of this -
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

- Richard Siken, excerpts from Little Beast.

a little thunder's good, thought maybe you would. but it's okay. we all feel left out. sometime's growing up, it can get you down. I give you something that no one's gonna give you - my sleeping skin and my heart deep down in you. I'll never tell you, but you're my little scar. goodbye's are hard and they're hard and they're hard. maybe when I die, I get to be a car. driving in the night, lighting up the dark. something in your voice, sparks a little hope. I wait up for that noise. your voice becomes my home.

- Land of Talk, It's Okay.

This is a journal I will probably never use.