“One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster” but I’ve eaten it polished the shell clean with tongue and teeth then brought the world up again a leaning heave at 2 am over a toilet I can only thank stars is western or my knees would be telling a different story But save that … Continue reading
for Carol when you go, leave the stones unturned and stoic on the lawn laugh the leaves dry and tune to stars obscured by snow, no sibylline parallax interests me anyway, no cairn can lure me into the woods this time except maybe the scent of gin, the silhouette of a hawk on a fencepost, … Continue reading
for September 2016 meet me at the dead end of the road when there is nowhere left to call home when there is no one left to forgive you, when your eyes are half closed and so drunk you don’t remember, who are you? this truck stop bar will be your tomb and your ghost … Continue reading
It starts with a dead animal: a slack-jawed sawdust-stuffed Grouper mounted over the sixty-inch screen. Its glassy eyes fix on the ink-riddled paper in the man’s hands, counting the empty squares. The formaldehyde preserved former swimmer longs for a time when its gills were saturated with sea water instead of mottled paint. It uses every … Continue reading
The same October fifth classmate died in cider crypt I took a grunt job back home event company haunted houses country club tweens construct Halloween season Finger Lakes dusk slit rushing arteries into the earth told by boss make extra scary this year parents pay good money so rooms roaming shadows eye dots I hosed … Continue reading
One humid night, Jeffrey went to a bachelor party at a strip club next to an electrical substation. Tiffany’s Cabaret in Buffalo, NY. After about forty minutes, he went outside with a gay groomsman and drank Molson Ice in the garden. The flowers were infested with swallowwort — neon petals blinked around stems, dangling to … Continue reading
Coe Review 