hand that feeds

Jo Jo Baby was twelve years old when they nabbed her. She’d followed meticulous procedure as usual—man enters room, man takes off all clothes and jewelry, all of man’s clothes and jewelry go inside special zip lock bag, zip lock bag goes inside bathtub, bathroom door is closed. Only this time Jo Jo was distracted by the particular putridity of this man’s stench, and didn’t shut the bathroom door completely. They heard everything via the tiny wire in his gold wrist watch and were outside waiting. Jo Jo Baby was thirteen years old when she gave birth to Nelson, son of the prison guard who stuck his dick in her every afternoon after lunch. Seven years were added to her sentence when she tried to abort him with a number two pencil under the table during indoor recreation. She gave birth with ankles and wrists shackled tight to the metal bed frame and they were only released once they took him away. Three days later she was found in her cell with cut wrists. They took her to the hospital already dead. The day nurse laughed when he saw her rolling in lifeless. I remember that whore, he said, lifting the elastic band of her bloody pants, couldn’t forget a hole as sorry as that one. Jo Jo Baby was already halfway to hell. Or so they said. The last words scratched onto her prison cell’s wall? WHAT MEANS DEATH ON THIS PLANET OF RELENTLESS ASSAULT. They sent the small, empty body to the furnace, took the ashes out with the trash. Sixteen years later to the day Nelson sat on the front lawn looking up at the clouds. Who’s my real mother? He asked them. Upon hearing his words the clouds parted. He thought for a moment he could make out a face in the space between them.Time for dinner! Came the evening call. He went inside and slurped his chicken soup. By the time he cleared his plate, he’d already forgotten about the whole thing. 

—OCT2025

3.8.25

Whimper fashioned as moan

Reach inside and extricate string of stones

Empty all water ever held by ocean onto 7-piece L-shaped sectional dick

In the 2009 sedan, in the slanted driveway, under pancake sky

I tell her with straight lips, I have chosen this

At dusk the world is a single rusted highway

Mired by trees, loose and lifeless

At a stop light I glance over

The pins in your eyes hold centuries

Once she carried a secret in her heart too long

and a cancerous mound grew over it 

2.6.26

Sitting on the sand at my favorite beach in the world, Montaña de Oro, with Star, watching the sun dip into the sea. The waves sizzle like stellar currents as they move back and forth over the shore. Yesterday we drove out to Antelope Valley to watch wildflowers. The entire valley was vacant. I miss the antelopes, I said. Later I read that they had been extirpated from the area since 1900. At night we met up with Fi and walked to the L.A. river, ducked under a fence, and sat under the moon. The night was vast and thin, quiet except for a man who drove his puttering dirt bike back and forth over a nearby pedestrian bridge. Fi opened her bag and revealed tea and teacups, chamomile and moringa, and a bowl of cut apples, blackberries, and cookies. I finished my tea quickly and noticed a small dead spider at the bottom of the cup. I asked Star and Fi what they thought it meant. Before we left Fi presented us each with a stick of incense. Mine was for Amitābha, the Buddha of infinite light. A curious siamese cat hung around us as we said goodbye. Star and I walked to the car and I picked kale from a sidewalk garden, I had no money and I was hungry for the earth. The next morning we left town early and drove north along the sea. The incense had crumbled into pieces in my purse. I burned them on the beach.

the crows

Thousands of crows, crows from all over, gathered after the weather event to strategize. During the night there had been a terrible storm, and when I awoke the sound of rushing winds had been replaced by a different kind of ominous call. I opened my curtains as I did every morning immediately upon waking and saw them, oily black covering every roof, lawn, fence, and power line.

Often when I see an animal, I wonder what it is a sign of. I wondered this now. If this was a symbol, it must be an oceanic one. They spoke to each other all at once, in complex tongues I was too simple to understand. All night I had tumbled through violent, sexual dreams. I awoke multiple times with my fists grasping the headboard, as if in sleep I was afraid of being carried away with the winds that threatened my thin walls.

I picked up my phone and took a photo of the scene. I thought about sending it to someone then remembered I knew no one. How long had I been in this room now? There was no way of being sure. My phone contained no numbers, no texts. I had spent many months, maybe a year, looking out this window, a lone creature in a glass enclosure, occasionally catching glimpses of life outside. Elsewhere life pressed on, but in this room I had barricaded myself so fully inside that even time didn’t dare pass through it.

When I had told Sapphire to leave that day, what I really meant was, if I lose you I will die. She took a long, slow sip of her coffee while gazing out at the passing clouds, then without another word, placed it down on the sill, picked up her jacket, and followed them. There the mug sat, in the exact place she had left it. The coffee had long since evaporated, leaving a sooty film. That residue was the only evidence she had been real. 

I laid back down on the bed now, as I did the day she left. I had laid for a very long time and waited. Today I watched the birds. Their complex web of relationships. I imagined a party with everyone I had ever known in attendance. Sometimes I had dreams like this. All day the black sea outside undulated. The tide never turned. It continued on into the night.

That night in sleep I saw Sapphire’s face gleaming in too-bright sun. I awoke to the sound of my phone, light pressing through the edges of my curtains. I rarely received calls anymore, and when I did, I didn’t pick up. Disoriented from the dream's haze I answered. Sapphire had been in an accident last night. She was dead.

I stood slowly and opened my curtains as I did every morning. The crows were gone. Not a single black feather remained. The entire world outside seemed strangely silent. And the sky—like an eye without an iris. Never in my life had I seen a sky as empty as that one. 

dogs with long claws

After the house burned down

She ran for miles with pencils in her hair

Forgetting the pictures she used draw so vigilantly

Hands with seven fingers, dogs with long claws

Everywhere she went, a trail of old shavings

Now we pass the days luring cats out from under cars

And nights building nests out of tires and sticks

Though the crack in the door I watch her move through dark hallways

Then out into the night, singing:

What once floated

now sinks like a stone 

all across the land

Cold hotel room, Bloody handprint, I didn’t know anything like this was possible, The cat’s stuck under the couch and the walls are filled with mold, Home care, Transfer now, Fear the spear, Nobody fights like mine, Quality cabinets for your perfect kitchen, Like an excellent high five, America’s largest, Rise injury, Homes that roam, Recreational, Operational, Women owned, Hot deals, Chill vibes, Calling all trillionaires, I Love Thomas Edison, Top performing, Newly renovated, It’s all we do, Celebrations, Four locations, Bet sidewalks, Bet rivers, Bet homes, Bet exchange of eyes, Hurt on the job, Trapped under kitchen table, Trapped under mountain of bones, Go hard or go broke, Put everything on the line, All day breakfast, Breathe in that—, Promise me supreme, Dream home, Witch wedding, More power, We’re winners, We watch the smoke rise on the horizon, We wake with polluted chests, We forget what the sky looks like, We forget that the night sky holds stars, We burn old wood—smell nothing, We forget the feel of worms, We forget the look of linen, We forget the force of ocean, Flesh eating bacteria, Doctor of tomorrow, Slow down save lives, Auto auction, Capital loans, Breast body face toe, Intergalactic affordable excellence, Lasting success, Pray for us, Billions recovered, Billions out of work, Billions shot on the scene, Metaphysical healing, We never quit, Spots available, Locked window, Locked car door, Messages come in threes, Come by accident, Give up your energy, Surrender your soul, Trade in your imagination, Sell your images for nothing, Cease to exist, Prices gouged, Flags waving in hot wind, Snow storm creeps in silently, Sleep in cars, Sleep in cracks in pavement, Stay loose, Stay dejected, Get better, Fix your nose, Wounds departed, Food that grows on trees, Plastic cup filled with water from ancient spring, Hum of iris frequency, Hum of ancestor wings, Whisper of pesticide monarch, Cancel the the light, Waves break the silence: All across the land, our hearts scream.

 

upon the dead earth

If it weren’t for the man jerking off in the Rite Aid parking lot, I wouldn’t have noticed. He had his hands in it. 

Spare some change for something to eat? Asked the man, eyes rolled back, tongue circling chapped lips. Shoppers came and went, eyes averted.

I rifled through my jacket pocket for my wallet, pulled out some cash, and that’s when I saw them, in a crack in the brick wall behind the drug store—a pair of massive tits, without a body.

What are you—? I asked, just as he was jizzing all over them. Steam rose in the air around his frostbitten flesh, and then dissipated. 

Look, he urged, and I was—at the tits, which were now hardening, toughening, turning into bark, a tree, which blossomed and then sprouted green apples, all in seconds.

He tucked his dick into his pants, tugged at a broken zipper, picked an apple off the tree. 

Well, thanks, he said, taking a bite, before limping out of the parking lot into the street, singing. 

YOU HAVE LIED TO MY BROTHER AND I FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR ABOUT THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS

This was when, I was starting to lose faith in things. Which I will say is not unusual, it can and often does happen even within the span of a day, I’ll wake with a sense of life’s meaning and at some point before nightfall misplace it. I was in the midst of a particularly rough spell, three months had quietly slipped by with little participation or consent on my end. I was, taking a break from loving. I was, a hammered down slab of meat, awaiting my roast over the spit. My problem is that I am always waiting. My problem is that I am always ready. For the sky to open. 

GET IN HERE. COME, BOY! COME! GET IN HERE YOU STUPID FUCKING DOG BEFORE I BEAT YOUR ASS! GET IN HERE! GET IN!

The wind howled through the barren trees lining the parking lot, and the little ration of light that had been allotted by day was now dwindling, and I stood before the crack, a six pack of toilet paper under my arm. 

Hello? Came a voice, from inside the crack. I looked but only saw darkness. Hello? It came again. I walked home briskly.

HI! YOU ARE NOW BEING RECORDED.

And the sky did open. The next day, while walking to a friends house.

I heard the voice again, this time while passing an open sewer vent. Hello?

I knelt down. Hi? I asked, and then I saw her, and then I was inside. 

It was a small farm in some sort of dust bowl. For miles around the little house I could only see flat beige earth. The sun beat down on every surface, and nothing grew. Intermittently the wind would pick up and fill the air with debris, placing the entire world inside a single dirty cloud. It was impossible not to squint. To breathe.

The woman was showing me the house. She was middle aged, wore a tight V neck t-shirt, and had bleached hair that cascaded down each side of her face like rainbows stripped of color. We were standing in the living room. Everything in the house was soft, pastel, and covered in plastic casing—the couch pillows, even.

QUESTION: WOULD YOU SNITCH ON YOUR COWORKERS FOR ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS?

My husband moved us out here, she whispered carefully. Just then a tall teenager walked abruptly out into the hall.

Hughey? The woman called. Hugh, darling? He shut the bathroom door.

The woman cranked back towards me, positioned her face into a smile.

This is it, she said, out back. We stood, looking. Then she wrapped her arms around me, held me snug to her large, firm breasts, which smelled like the mall used to. Over her shoulder I could still see the farmland’s empty sprawl. One hundred shirtless men crawled in neat rows, their necks wrapped in chain, pulling a monstrous metal machine that tilled the earth. As they moved along on hands and knees they deposited seeds. Seeds which would not grow.

Shh, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay, the woman cooed into my ear. Shh, she held onto me, tight. I would have fallen over if it were not for her strong, sad arms. She would have fallen over if she had no one to hold upright. And so we stayed standing, together.