Milk-toned Oregon militias bellow Give us back our land in the
most unironic ways Does America’s shirt look eggshell-white
or more like white-panic? The problem with pizza is it keeps
getting eaten The J train is stalled and another part of Brooklyn
is on fire Sirens dry rub the brittle morning In 2011 I lived in
the 11th arr. In a month I was finally able to order a pig shaped
princess cake in nearly coherent French AND correct Euro at
the boulangerie with yellow frosting curtains and the picnic
heat The firm lady at the counter, who for weeks spied me
silently point at the croissants and raspberry tarts and chicken
baguette n fling whatever coins, gave me a lil wink I suaved
home victorious First Kumeyaay in Paris with my little pink
treat Junk loves reflection Two buskers sang “Hey, Joe” on Canal
St. Martin n waved me over to sip 1664s and neck Our wobbly
night at the firefighter’s ball betting which ones would wink
back and giggle bubbles into our weak vodka crans Today
municipal workers scrub blood off those streets Refresh.
Refresh. Refresh. Still you didn’t like the pic Roy posted of me
reading at the Whitney in my purple tee and acid washed
spray-on skinnies rolled to perfect wtf is wrong with you
spectacle What critics have called my gem-like ankles Stupid
blustery shame Winter windchill at memorializing the saboteur
No dummy, you have to go with yrself Commit I’m an expert at
peacing out We all have our survival strategies growing up on
the rez America’s first POW camps In a way I’m indebted to
dissociation Shouting gets so small it’s almost quaint I fold it
into my pocket Even now it’s hard for me to come/back to my
body It’s here I hold all my selves all my Junk, and if everything
that passes through the pile changes the pile: You have changed
me The sentiment, cut loose from shame, floats free in the
crescent evening Wd you call laughing at a dog heartily licking
his balls “Dog-tainment”? Junk is discovery and anchor A chair
is a chair is a footstool is a prop is a metaphor is a directive
(have a seat) is kindling No dummy, “discovery” is too colonial
If I have to defend keeping Janet Jackson in a poem, the devil is
truly a peanut (gallery) I’m not judgmental I just don’t like anything
you do Who cares what I think? Run thru life convinced
yr all neutrality n earnest curiosity but that’s a lie Judgment
happens, but that’s not a ship-falling-off-the-edge-of-the-world
situation See momentum The thrust The wave The object and
its continuation The lilt at the end of a breath Movement at the
end of an obstruction Growth in the breakage, usually when
talking to yrself in the shower or singing a Janet Stupid fragile
male ego I whisper feedback, feedback into the pillow I dream
and in my dream I am leaving New York for Philly This dream
happens approx every time I sign a rent check Philly sure likes
to brandish its colonial history Maybe I’m just bitter some ppl
get to have history But for reals on some streets they keep the
charming, archaic whale blubber burning oil lamp fixtures
which, no longer using oil, might seem obsolete Whose structure
points at a function we might no longer “get” I’ve never lit
a lamp myself “Knowing” changes with age Ppl give you credit
to appreciate the junk Nod to a past you’d like to remember So
I will always keep Janet Miss Jackson If Yr Nasty in the poem If
anything exists in 50 years I have faith in the future’s ability to
Google Ask Jeeves Yahoo Answers YouTube tutorial Webinar
whatever Try to freehand an ampersand Ppl say Diogenes and
King James and shit and I accommodate yr idea of Ages Will
you make space for mine I imagine you saying “lecithin” Teeth
the pile Feel the skin on the inside of yr worship It’s like yr
asking me to tell you, as I rove over the broom handles and
the keychains and the half bottle of vermouth—Yes of course
it’s all good, Yr Junk in any season Yr Junk in any city Yr Junk in
any element I’m guilty of treating my man like my enemy As if
he stole something from me that I have to bicker back But in
the argument’s zenith I’m petty af I don’t want to be petty I
want to be petted as in give me a cat but here we are—Dummy,
you’ll always succumb to yourself Shame like an Energizer
battery it keeps going, and going, and going It’s juvenile to
think you can glide thru life perfectly undisturbed I know what
it’s like to feel as if every confrontation will end with someone
literally dead To dodge confrontation instead Atoms rearrange
arrange and remake, like proteins or Legos A tuna melt is best
on pressed bread splashed w/ butter n garnished with curly
fries Everyone, they say, has a new pop punk fuck boy built like
a yeti with the stick straight Veronica Lake bang Dating is hard
bc gay men are a garbage fire Why do ppl say they “love food”
like it’s a revelation A secret I’m such a food-aholic Oh, like
literally every other living organism in existence? Junk
breathes How dare ppl be born in the ’90s I like tall guys bc I’m
lookin for someone who can fend off the ppl who will kill us
when we swap spit in the karaoke booth That time we hung
out with our giddy newness at the Mexican restaurant by the
bookstore with the best reading series in the city and the
glassy eyes zooming in on each other Seeing only the wonder,
like canary yellow on a canary or when our sky wraps up in
Earth’s shadow This is my yellow heart This is my gauzy two-
people-gazing-across-the-night-into-each-other instrumental
situation Who owns the attraction passing between bodies We
say neurons “fire” because a frame of mind needs the border of
poetry Something fuzzy buzzing Your face glows coastal, leaves
me feelin fine as the powdery shoreline at low tide Dummy, all
our lives we are the wavelengths of light who escape the negative
space Urge toward sunset scattered roadways, morning haze,
and the gusting forward of time Oh shut the fuck up Voices
change How dare you tether me to lines I wrote in like 2009
Goin over yr Junky poems huh? Do you ever wish you cd just be
always one self? “Whole” is a privilege and a pedestal Whole
Foods has a delicious hot buffet Red alert DEFCON 5 Deep Space
9 lol Clack, clack of expensive shoes slapping down the train
platform A car backfiring Sputter of gunfire on a Snapchat story
I don’t know where the feeling is or what to do with it n spent
most of the day in bed with my eyes squeezed shut but then
we went to the park and ate a vanilla ice cream sandwich and
an empanada We went to the vigil n marched n held hands Got
pizza and played pool at a gay bar with John & Peter bc whatever
season it is it will not be open season on my spirit And
then went to karaoke and after, I said I love you for the first
time in my life said it to someone I’m dating and you
said I love
you so much and I know where that feeling is and what to do
with it It’s going all over the place How are the people most
fucked by society treated the absolute worst, and those most
coddled given the most opportunity How can “happiness” be
anything more than a metaphor for privilege Thus my
obsession with punchlines—stop me if you’ve heard this one:
Who will save your stole? This is a thot experiment and there I
go drooling When you nurse a crush for two years you become
a boss at being tipsy All that rub, no climax Let’s wait awhile
before we go too far I thot falling in love was a burden A kind of
crowding on my landscape Love creates space, dummy Doesn’t
take it up Tangy harpsichord Crunching into a crisp pink lady
The sherbet swirls on these apples is maybe the most perfect
color in nature The perfect denim jacket is worn, rolled, and
the color of heavy fog tumbling from the Pacific into the bay
“Love” is a soft fur trim The way old cotton wears thin on
broad shoulders A line of tiny buttons on a pair of purple wool
gloves With its fats and its salts and its sugars, Junk food was
designed not to satisfy I have a crush on this thrift store clerk
whose curly hair bowls when he belly lols I don’t actually know
what that means, “perfect denim jacket” Just what I’d feel if I
had it Trash is thrashy but Junk is gunk I sat on another pair of
glasses and cried for a legit 15 minutes but the lenses can be
recut and put into new frames I have a drawer of Junk glasses
missing an arm or a lens It could be worth something one day
I suppose Junk is also a way of not letting go—containing the
stasis We cd potentially be alive our whole life How to be Junk
and decisive I have this way of saying “bus” so that it rhymes
with “moose” when I want to be festive As in Gtg or I’m gonna
miss my boose I claw for reasons to live lol and find them Some
days you just have to take the boose to Crown Heights for a
tune-up Junk is anti-stasis Ashes to atoms In the sense that
Junk wants to become again How the fuck do ppl still have
energy for sweaty sexytimes after midnight He wants to go
again and I want to go home, have an indica chamomile and
slack like a boss It’s sad, not havin a 20’s stamina but once I
learned you can make someone cum three times a night and
they can still dump u I was like Welp Trapped there, I don’t
want to eat apples from the tree in the yard in the neighborhood
of that feeling anymore I like mood/lighting and draw a
bath in my brain The bubbles spread across my knees like relief
Do you hear cicadas? Crinkle cuts & queso with bacon and
jalapeño The movie starts n then a bump in the Internet connection
We are now boarding rows 15 and higher Suitcase cpl
of months A couch surfing budget Eat Pray (Prey?) Love cpl
of months All over the motherfucking planet looking good
while I’m at it What I want changes like an accent, elusive as a
mantra said with different inflections Go home with a dude cos
he lives in a condo w/ a foam bed bc who wants to spend
another night on Oakland friend’s green oval shag again
Traveling broke is truly a younger person’s game Look into
the dark sky and think, how far out does it go? Voices exist as
thick rubber planets in my throat hole I’m a goddamn catch
Molasses, or Mole Asses Day-Glo pink bell sleeves Over a life,
the first times pile like dirty sheets And suddenly I’m living a
season with the alcoholic San Francisco cos he was wearin a
red bandanna in his profile pic We’ve all done it A thunderstorm
rush under covers and subsequent clinic visit Basement nasal
twee bands & their delicate white fallings feelings If his tight
grey slacks are high-wasted and I’m high/wasted and he sits
arms crossed in the karaoke spot and the huge bulge and
widening pre cum stain, I will, in fact, genuflect Best thing abt
leaving town is the poem suddenly comes differently—as if it
needs a kind of obscurity in order to really be seen Hindsight,
for example Sight becomes a craft of memory Memory—the
fantasy that actually happened I believe in butterscotch candy
and chocolate covered gummy bears from the pic n mix at the
Virgin Atlantic terminal in San Francisco Int’l Sun smooched
n sparkling famous band afternoon Unfurling atop East River
State Park Kalamata olive pot Jolly Ranchers n falafel balls
The sky in its gown of nostalgia For a minute we were in the
donut I mean moment Confessed a mutual love of scratching
the paint off things Melty like cheese like whipped cream Cake
batter double fried disco lights Bobbing like those inflatable
tube dudes Continually recycling excitement Feedback Fizzy
All I’ve ever wanted was to feel the heat with somebody But
mostly affairs r sort of short/intense like gas Worst thing abt
this famous artist cokehead cheating on his girlfriend w/ me is
the shameful thrall Pitching a tent in this terrain Let’s talk abt
how Uranus tilted Abt how glass is neither solid nor liquid It’s
always moving The lake in the winter when the ppl traverse
the surface in spiky crampons Which is not a portmanteau So
obsessed with warm in the winter Warmth is the anomaly
Something that requires generation Engines in the stars In the
cores Seeking heat Most of the universe burns cold Not havin
a bf in so long I forgot how something as mundane as holding
hands makes a target of us You reach yr arm out to rest on my
shoulders and I pull away I’m not afraid of intimacy I’m scared
of assault I want 2 love in spite of the violence Black cat 9 lives
short days long nights livin on the edge not afraid to die Iraq
facing the possibility of total economic collapse on the back of
war and falling oil prices vs Australia’s avocado shortage One
food truck in Sydney has resorted to using frozen stuffs Gasp!
Café calamities It’s not even theater Sympathies swell along
familiar lines Focus instead on dry skin and yr steadily expanding
waistline Impulse aisle induced psychosis Too much
credit is ascribed the panic of “self-control” It’s like some
choices formed before I was born Hard work is hard but
decisions, like metaphors, are built within a moat of desire
Love in a hopeless kingdom Like, okay sugar and booze feel
good, then bad Sometimes real bad But art feels bad before it
feels even worse And then even the best n I just want to wear a
pretty dress When I left yr house for the last time you said “aw,
now I’m sad” Grief is another way of making it all about you
How costume is yr grief? How girthy? How banshee? Everyone
wants to be loud and public and right Whose grief can piss the
farthest Is the poem distinct or another kind of feed I’m starvin
Hope for yr Junk Reinvention Innovation Buttercream Words
compound meaning all the time BEER ME yells a man at the
bar n suddenly to beer—converted to verb Make a beer of me
Like Junk passing 2 garbage passin
g 2 ashes passing 2 atoms
Extinction wipes words from earth The only way to fight ISIS
is to wipe them from the face of the earth But I’m from a group
that others have tried to wipe from the face of the earth Had
reasons like yours—savages, bloodthirsty, inhuman—War
doesn’t work Anything simple is a ruse Life somehow earns its
complications Never just the night in question I’m not saying
gay men are bad I’m just saying I don’t like them They keep
saying they “are paleo now, bitch” L’Oréal True Grip texturizing
powder hair Pubes trimmed like a French garden (if any
at all) Rag & Bone combat boots treading every social interaction
like a battle My skin mite as well be camouflage-colored
to these homonormative Hollister cologne smelling mean ass
eyerolling trollers Which is why I was so freaked you even