Author Archives: almostrov

I set fire to my used tissues, godding (“to god,” transitive verb) smoldering spineless cranes

Signs on county road lawns and in financial district windows realize the horror Halloween suggests.

Bare walls again. We’ve hung larger frames with lesser nails.

the puddle grows at the end of the driveway equal parts carsoap and marchfly

I can play silence in the key of flame crashing into wick.

The arc of the moral universe is dripping down my chin.

I’m blind to ends. A barber snipping air. A grillmaster flipping smoke.

stranded clouds and the cricket static signal the summer shorting-out

Oh, carpentered heart, full of Müller-Lyer arrows and Cupid splinters.

Batteries pass between Walkman and Gameboy. Report suspicious baggage.

My computer counts its own bytes. I guess it’s honest with itself.

Why, when I wish us well, does it sound like I’m speaking of houseplants?

something in the air chases cattle ‘neath the elm

I wish I had taught the algorithm better. Now it teaches me.

And yet we accumulate elders. High humidity, no rain.

You want to believe you can record a moment not already paused and posing.

We owe ourselves a ballad. Verse upon verse with an insistent plot. We owe ourselves a ballad with choruses we don’t already know.

The venter of love is a threat. A canopy under which I’m dared to walk.

Radio versus the unrelenting glare of Grief the Mutator

when squirrel chatter bleeds into rocking chair creak, I recollect delinquent gods

The moths of all time fill the sky at once, and we insist that was then.

I, too, have many aunts, and some distant cousin added okra to me.

Been busy in my other future — long walks, still, but nearer to you.

Take our taxes, take arms against us. But we have hands and history.

Fresh from the Frog, it’s an all-new Gilmore Girls! Can Rory face the void?

like eye under lid, paused before a warm wall, we mime instead of rest

if only i had given up dreams and hobbies a little slower

set free with nothing to do besides believe in hand plus soap plus hand

Careen through rivers alluvium, past that dock you dreamed, dockless kid.

you sure raise your risk for someone who hates fate for having favorites

not knowing what it’s like to not be chased, I might not slow to mourn

you can’t start a duel without a glove; my doubts would kill for that much style

Our clothing is wrong and houses are clothing now. Stay away, undress.

an adult visitor trespasser from birth

Will fall follow once we’ve been swallowed by the snake that ate our summer?

Could get by broken until you slipped like a syll- able from mem’ry

SHOW ME MAGIC: a wizard weaving safety from my lizard synapse

Born a pepita and paid in pumpkins, ‘course I thought wages were fate

Stuck in a pose you learned from “Yoga for Mourning Carrie Fisher.”

You told me, purpling, “I am the Moscow of pain.” Meaning what? You’ve won?

if shrugs were lightning and thunder were an eye roll, i’d leave you droughtless

build and burn at once, I’ve learned in my career as a boom carpenter

what left my chest I’d clenched desperately like oak under grip of squirrel

stories have been told over the course of the word “go,” so please talk slow

After the decade we’ve had—how not to ooze gnat and oleaginy?

you had something sharp to play once, but now you’re caught throwing rock paper

Left my tadpole ass behind: a gift for science for posterity.

you must’ve witnessed me mock the sound of you when you are wuthering