The first time my town saw the sky it sucker-punched us in the throat, left us breathless, said, I'm gonna keep you awake some nights without touching you. You'll make it up, the pain, you always do.

The future gets no say in who we are.

Even good hearts know how to turn bad touch and genocide into clichés just to make room for more comfort.

If you've never been rocked back by the presence of purpose this poem is too soon for you. Return to your mediocrity, plug it into an amplifier and rethink yourself.

But I still show up for gentleman practice in the company of lead dancers, hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.

...others, with halos shaped like rollercoasters you'd stand in line to ride twice.

There was a typewriter buried alive in that horse, the one I road to get out of the flood.