For months afterwards, I don’t long for wildness. I listen less to songs than their chord progressions, read only Agatha Christie novels, set rigid rules about when to sleep…

  My new roommate’s car is a no man’s land of things that belonged to an ex-husband and his ex-wife. My roommate, the mutual neutral friend, patiently ferries these objects…

  —Christopher, 1974–1995 We’re walking on the interstate at night, in a downpour that leaves us dry Pushing through slashes of lacquered acrylic, pressed back by a wind I can’t…

  I’m always rinsing something in the sink. At night, nursing bra unhooked, I press lanolin onto a fingertip. No one will ever take care of me again. Before I…

  Shipworms were chewing the wood supporting the pier containing Frank Sinatra Park. Small beer, you might say; no beer, I might answer. Soon the pier would be soluble, the…

  i attention split pretending to listen you follow the scent of your fear     replying as though your mind were not divided for now no one can realize you’re terrified…

  Lost savings, empty storefronts— a window of time but not of opportunity. Somewhere in the future, jobs wait for their workers, directionless and tentatively loyal. We are trying to…

  I don’t remember when the last survivor +of the Ludlow Massacre died. A story online disappeared, and I don’t remember when. I don’t remember the type of shoe +unscripted…

  They both move along the path as car headlights on a dark road. She has a face that looks like the first sun on seeing its light reflect off…

  —after Andrea Read A woman holds a white chicken in the back seat of her car and the wind gusts, throwing the poplars back as if they’ve suffered a…

  ‘what life I got left, I clawed together’ a world where polar ice melt means more plunder ice inside St. Louis windows children freezing to death in al-Hol in…