Author Archives: almostrov

In what moment will I appear stupidest to my daughter, I wonder, standing in the end of the yard where the jasmine smell doesn’t reach

When the dawn breaksIs the pillow over your headOr the phone in front of your face?

There you sitat the edge of your bedscanning cable for tits.and on comesPenn and Teller: Bullshit

Suitcases slept in the car Kid didn’t sleep at all First family drive at dawn

I took a long drive. The first anniversary of the last night you were alive.

Who keeps the zookeepers?

Have yet to divide Still just reducing The fraction

The most beautiful frames in film history: – Bruce Campbell exeunt Darkman – Patrick Ewing in The Exorcist 3

Bold of my therapist to expect change when their waiting room magazines remain the same

Could a pumpkin rind protect a man?

I’ve seen that actor’s face long enough that I love them.

Inquiring unfinished lives want to know: What contractor is gouging and ghosting on god?

rise, accessorized in pug fur, and summon the nearest cheese

this fury’s almost nourishing, like olives ripening over and over

Every bar I ever saw you play is closed. It’s a shame, I know. It’s a shame I know.

I remember the kitchen but not where we would’ve kept our wine and spirits

You wouldn’t think there’d be such a big difference between Decembers 2022 and 2023.

Summer is a home invader Florida can’t kill.

If this cold front doesn’t hit us, I’m done fucking for the year.

not being happy makes me so fucking angry

Swings, slides, and wind chimes. Cross Main Street for a croissant and to watch traffic.

In the field behind the honors college dorm, the Stetson-wearing, Black-and-Mild-smoking virgin playing Travelling Willburys songs on his mandolin goes unnoticed.

Minnie Ripperton wrote “Loving You” in the next neighborhood over and shamefully, reader, there is no shrine.

The hawks don’t seem To mind the increase of bubble Activity in our backyard

For years I mistook Those squeaky ducks For bats

if we had more friends, we could pick more blueberries

the fêtes are full of frets when all the guests could be hosts

On a hill in Jamaica Plain, I saw a band I’d never see again. And all the folks on that hill with me, Just as likely I’ll never see.

I didn’t know how to be in a skate park Or watch a ska band Until I closed my eyes to listen And got made fun of

Been on the bench these beautiful days, meaning not participating, not on an actual bench, which would be nice.

What’s being woven with the cosmic cotton that appears to us as clouds and dust? I hope an oversized nightshirt, baseball sleeves, big enough for mankind’s knees.

I can remember, as I grew taller, the feeling of my arms hugging higher and higher up your back, eventually over your shoulders, and now, just over. I love you. I love you.

How long is the sky’s recovery after lightning? Because it takes my back a week to calm a spasm.

a week later, what’s the closest I can hope for…. …maybe a hot air balloon… to place me up amongst the last carbon you exhaled…

and the next day, no less dead

We stop to watch the dance studio’s Revue under a tent On the soccer field Across from the church

Wiping my daughter’s stuffy nose Is like reaching back in time To wipe my own Like old grapes on a new vine Like new eyes on mashed potatoes

I wait in long lines for overpriced theater wine, but outside when we part, I’m certain any second the show’ll start

the burden of freedom is knowing we’ll have to try swing dancing again

wander until your hips horse me home at last

During the hurricane We did our dancing In a doorframe

There’s a fizz to the wine though I know it’s flat. My tongue’s usefulness cut in half.

How many years of treading water with white knuckles in an ocean with a bomb in each wave

You tell me you named your daughter Coraline because you love Tim Burton. Your ego is bound for a very peculiar death.

Every day since 2020, Distance and no guarantees. Your breath is drifting up to me, A Lazarus of normalcy.

We shush our dishwasher like librarians. In one of the infinite universes it may wake the baby. And God forbid that universe is ours.

Select the play-by-play announcers of your life: Steve “Snapper” Jones and a sandhill crane.

Facebook says my high-school crush is born-again exhausted, meanwhile I sleep in tongues

I’ll love you ’tilthe red storm of Jupiteris near enough to be named.

Between moss strands in that finch nest is all that’s left of the syllabus I assigned myself.

need a rest from trying and failing to rest

By the time you feel better I’m a wreck in your wake Trading hangovers like yawns

We no longer refer to our hugs as trips to the gun show. Deferentially, we now feed each other’s 24-inch pythons.

ashes to ashes, bit to bit — can’t skip death like a a hip-hop album skit

study the arc of that girl lifting off her toboggan, put yourself between her and a birch in a Rochester I could never visit

A fear so stupid, shared by so few, but that casts such a long and deadly shadow — as if, say, all the people who’s favorite film is Farce of the Penguins had the right to smother my children’s children’s children and then pay senators to yell at me about it.

Phil Ochs, grab your gun. Beware public funds for sports stadiums.

Been bouncing around without walls somehow. I want a pit. I want it now.

our final text just rests and my pulse takes the momentum of a lake

Foot control minus will power, I lurch from under the carwash dryer, dewy from the cocoon.

wind was leaking from the trees and salt was lifting off the seas I bit into a decent peach

There’s only one friend’s mom’s face I remember; the rest dissolve like Crystal Light in tap water

none chose, some called to divorce splinter from thumb of daughter

Stroller stuck in the pasture, baby’s first agrotourism.

I play WiiSports while you, drive home in the snow, waiting to dig you a parking spot.

Will all the snot I ever wiped on my childhood sleeve reincarnate as crust in my daughter’s eye?

I feel included like the many DIRECTV and Bose technicians my dad kept inviting over after installation.

Play-Doh picks up a patio of pollen, so Youngest Cousin decamps to play bartender.

Once, a house-sized gator peered into my room with its window-sized eye, and I got my dad to get his gun.

Fifteen minutes — one-fourth of one billable hour. And the longest I can stand without a look at you.

When I look at you — so many problems, whereas my W-2 — so many commas

This year I made a lumber stack and next I’ll make a lumber rack