ThreeStarSalute

Some days I fall awake, brain like Hemingway. I’m a cocked hammer. I’m a drawer slammer. Oh, would I were a blue Wo(o)lf wading in the River Ouse— rocked pockets drop off. I would never desert you. I would never desert you. Most nights I can’t fall asleep, head too full of daydreams: Drifting the pristine sea of hospital sheets. I’d let you, slow-drip IV, take care of me. But I could never deserve you and I could never desert you. Still every time I open my eyes, I see new ways I might. My black canvas belt tied into a slipknot tight around my ceiling pipe. And I could try to fly, a blackbird shot out

Excitement in Eastern Turkey today as workers rescue a boy from the rubble of an apartment building that was toppled by last weekend's earthquake. Craig Windham, tell me more about the boy in Turkey. Hands, goblets of rain water. Pillow shoes. Imagine one hundred and twenty hours like that, fasting, becoming a piece of earth. You can take the rest of the day for numbers climbing the Hellevator, so long as you stop now, as I stopped, stretching, slow breath, swill of coffee, seventeen seconds. Rewind, stretch to minutes, feel the quake down there, before the twenty hands touching, the hoist, black stretcher, blue neck brace

Nothing beeps here. No wheels on the chairs, or metal exposed, no ominous chrome shining in sterility-- only ordinary recliners, warm; it could be your living room. And the people don't look like patients-- faded blue jeans, UConn sweatshirts; hair blonde or brown or black and short or long; the style immutable. Nothing beeps, or at least very little does, and the room could almost pass for comfortable, because you wear pink Nike high-tops and a sky-blue tee-- Life is Good-- because you sink into the plaid recliner that could be in your living room with the portrait of your parents smiling down at you, wishing

Near end of summer, we stay at Okemo Ski Resort and I tell you all profits go to breast cancer research, from the World's Largest Cupcake baked in Royal Oak, Michigan: one thousand two hundred and twenty four pounds, triple vanilla, pink frosting. On the day we hiked Mt. Mansfield, the same day you planned cupcakes and candles at the top, to work backwards from 60, celebrating my birthday, all birthdays that you wouldn't see. The World's Largest Cupcake. So much sad sweetness.

Bulldog The first time I meet my lawyer, John Budlong, his eyes blue and fierce as icicle daggers, I realize his name is a near anagram for Bulldog. You have a drinking problem, Bulldog says as if naming a state capital, You know that, right? I can feel my eyes widen. Mom's look like a dam the moment before bursting- the flood waters of sadness. After the arrest, I didn't tell her for three days, stomach of rocks and lava. I'd burst into wakefulness early every morning, the shock of lightning sizzling in my brain, dress halfway, then pace, shirtless and barefoot, the pointed pebbles of the driveway barely breaking the skin.

Leash Love (No Homo) Here we are shirts off in the rain and I love you (no homo) you don't know you're a poem. You are graceless stains on my bedroom carpet-- Budweiser, Jameson in hot apple cider, screwdrivers-- each a unique dream-like shape, scents thick and sweet as syrup while we blossom loud and honest intimate blushing sex questions. Kinkiest thing you've ever done? I keep forgetting I fucked your sister once, thrashing through seventeen, in some righteous abysmal fury. Your mother calls, then your girlfriend. So, you are innumerable toppled red solos--oh fuck!-- your voice in that  thin, high tremor, that genuine, disa

The doc sends you home with some glorious drug that rumbles your stomach, produces a swift, sweeping glow, a continual buzz that makes you think you suddenly know something. Big. Your arm is big. Hand too. You unravel the pink, pale bandages and reveal the bruise, its little purple storm clouds, covering the underside of your forearm spreading as if diffused in water, passing the bicep, almost up the shoulder. A bump juts out: the small mountain of your body, a misplaced second elbow. You touch it. You touch it and now you're afraid to leave home. Already, your cousin has called, voice casual, making sure you were just d

1. I forget your birth date but I took a guess and I've been playing those numbers for three weeks. 2. I'm glad you return my letters, only I wish they weren't just mine, unopened, inside bigger envelopes that aren't sprayed with perfume. 3. Wherever you are, roll up your sleeves. Wear each bruise like a bracelet. 4. Last night some guy pissed in the corner of the store by the ATM. All I could think of was your lower row of teeth crooked and dazzling. 5. Someone won the lottery, 76,000 dollars! Only nobody's claiming it. They keep playing it on the news, on the radio. I know because they won't let us change the statio