you’ll find no imperative here.
my oldest friend, there’s a vent behind the library where the homelessometimes sleep. when it’s daylight you can look down through the grate to darkenedeep. at night, in the colder seasons, steamist builds there into billows, and all the huddled indistinct pull…
she’s a girl who knows the right time for bricks. she’s got a bag of concrete, and she needs no other tricks. aggressively near-naked is her uniform for warring—she spent enough time dressing up when she was newborn, low-built, boring. she’s got…
tourmaline and tiger’s eye were having a contention. tiger sided with reaction; tourmaline preferred prevention. to settle their dispute they asked the iron to advise them, so he cast them into pebbles wrapped in granite to disguise them, and put them in…
my lover has become a bee. i will love her all the same. i will plant a honeysuckle tree and gather stones to spell her name. the stones will come from the river in our woods where we met in full moonlight…
“yes, yes,” he says, as if the hundred-seventh time. “grandfather’s side, at some remove. once heard there’s resemblance, but—what does that prove? everyone’s got it who thinks on crime.” “shit not? i’m all talk. i just read that name historical, some scopter…
“branding: it means burning into the skin–say, surface; say, sensitive supple strata; say again, skin, and be clearest–burning into this makes a known of what’s [sh]own to nears-enough-to-see, which for wielders is nearest, and–be honest now–dearest. honest as hornets in the nest,…
we–i won’t forget–were walking waist-deep in wild grass. “this is what i get,” i was complaining, “for coming with you, cutting class.” (before this day i thought all fields were filled with ticks.) when i caught up to where she crouched, she…