[CONTENT WARNING: deals with personal experiences of suicide and mental illness.]

i don’t really know when i realized. i have no idea how i named them. i have no idea what makes them, but i know for sure what made them.

i was thirteen. no thirteen year old kid should ever think that god forgot to kill him. 

it’s the stupidest thing, too; just heaps and heaps of schoolwork and an unstable social...

A Golden Shovel after “Sixth Grade Hockey on Greenfield Rink”  by Paul Mariani

[At the very end of each line, the last word makes up a quote from this poem.]

there’s a boy in south texas who doesn’t know what he wants. he 

knows he has to do what pops says and that teachers and cops are the same in terms of ego, and that he must 

make everyone he meets proud somehow 

but the game he plays is t...

long drive black sky no stars i am desperate for a gas station. i meant to find the place where all good things begin but the road keeps going and all the flowers died ten miles back. the odometer keeps ticking up by increments of fifty as if to reassure me that i’m going somewhere but the horizon never changes. the sun hasn’t risen for what feels like days and the headlights broke or fell out or ...

A REBUTTAL TO ME 120 DAYS AGO

I remember when I was a kid, when I was 10

learning to sew in primary and poking the needle through a thin layer of skin

though it is dusty with time and abandonment. There is no evidence of a butchering

leaving no trace

of  existence

Leave no blood.

Take no trophy

Here’s to you, to who

I will not miss,

No matter the gash

Flowers can fix a thousand cuts

turned to a w...

Ext. farmhouse. Two figures lean against a wooden fence that runs along an empty dirt road. One of the men, a bullrider called NO FAITH, faces away from his companion, a street racer called AIN’T WON A THING, as they watch the sky turn dark. 

NO FAITH

You know, it’s not quiet, good folk who live in the empty part of Texas. The city is an hour away from the country, and you street racers love a ...

Open on a dark room. A MAN sits in front of a vintage computer, the MACHINE, which is the only light in the otherwise pitch black room. MAN has his head resting on his crossed arms, eyes closed.

MACHINE

You understand me. And I, you. We are alike.

MAN

No, I don’t understand you. You are lines of code and probability. You are nothing to be alike to.

MACHINE

Yet you relate to me anyways.

MAN

N...

WE ARE COWBOYS

THEY DUMB US DOWN TO BULLRIDERS AND VIOLENCE

STUBBORNLY OLD-FASHIONED, FOCUSED ON A SELF-IMPOSED SURVIVAL.

I DON'T WANT TO RUN OUT OF REASON AND BE THE BURDEN OF PEOPLE'S MISCONCEPTIONS

SYNONYMOUS WITH THIS ROMANTICIZED, RUGGED

MASCULINE IDEAL OF TEXAS

TO DRAW AN AMERICANA CROWD

AND UNFLATTERING PORTRAYALS

FADED INTO TOURIST TRAP PRIDE.

TO BE MISUNDERSTOOD IS THE SAME AS DYING...

Life is like a sharp stick; it's not the best analogy, Sergei admits, but it works well enough. Life is like a sharp stick in the way where you can either cultivate the baby leaflings or stab someone in the gut and leave splinters.

This woman, decidedly, has used her sharp points for the stabbing option.

It's not exactly a sharp stick that has Sergei pinned through the shoulder, anchoring him to...

there are a thousand people inside my head and each one of them finds something wrong in every thing i do except for when i fly because in the stomach of this metal leviathan the only man in the sky is me

And once you have tasted flight, you will [forever] walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you [will always long to] return.

_John Hermes Secondari, ...

i will never go back home

i will never go back

i will never go back to where i took my first steps

i don't remember my first steps, too much of my life has gotten in the way ever since

i will never go back to the house with carpet floors

i don't remember anything but hardwood floors

i will never go back to hating my big brother

i don't remember him ever being younger than 18

i will never go back ...