don't even visit that place, they'll sharpen their teeth on your smile.

to never open a book, always reading a magazine. outspend betting, if it looks like winning, you haven't been. knives don't have your back. I wait and I count, the knives don't have your back. I wait and I count to the last breath we take. what we made doesn't make sense. what's a wolf without a pack. open your chest and take the heart from it. open your chest. what's bad, we'll fix it. what's wrong, we'll make it all right. it's gone. we'll find it. take so long. we've got time, all the time.

- Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, Winning

Our Father who art buried in the yard.

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.

between the church and under haiku, it is roped in deep blue.

drinks aside, it's time we tried to stay somewhere. take my only souvenir, hold it up high, toss it off the roof. if it should break, tell me how it sounds when it lands. steal time when there isn't enough. turn the wheel, I'm backing it up. don't feel old, hope I'm backing up. don't feel old. bloodshot eye, a ringing in the left ear. 1975 ringing in my right ear. our simple rules failed each other. we're close to used to being wrong.

- Emily Haines, Shrine To Fast Goodbyes.

she's got no more time, now she wants mine.

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

sinking under the river.

with all the luck you've had, why are your songs so sad. sing from a book you were reading in bed and took to heart. all of your lives unlived, reading in bed.

- Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, Reading In Bed

but under our skins, the whirr-click of the war beginning.

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.

but I hate those people back from the core of my donkey soul.

November like a train wreck –
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze –
but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

– Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

- Tony Hoagland, Reasons To Survive November.

I spent my whole life walking, hid such colorful wings.

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.