Embroidered Mexican blankets make good 30th birthday gifts.

In with a bang bang.

Obama is for lovers. 

On Child Psychopathy: “The question’s not ‘Why do some people do bad things?’ ” Lynam told me by phone. “It’s ‘Why don’t more people do bad things?’ And the answer is because most of us have things that inhibit us. Like, we worry about hurting others, because we feel empathy. Or we worry about other people not liking us. Or we worry about getting caught. When you start to take away those inhibitors, I think that’s when you end up with psychopathy.”

if you're six

a box
a string
a carrot
a stick;
in objects and in aim you must
insist insist insist.

proportional

papercuts might
be resolved by
enlarging paper's
edges until
sheets of pulp the width of sycamores
slice bloodless
slits in giants' thumbs.

on making things

all the things
i've failed to make
paraded me in sleep,
a weariness in ways
and waves of shame
about them.
faraway,
they stayed dim,
but brilliant,
face to face,
they felt like
some mistake
i never mended.

MY pain

i had an ache i couldn't name.
like southerners who call all sodas coke,
i called it "pain."
propped along my collar bone,
it rolled in motions of devotion:
the chest the head, the heart
and shoulder,
fissures gripping ghosts
of order.

it spurred a thirst for normal names--
the classics!
broken bone,
a bloody nose,
a papercut, a sprain!
each object wants to own its own objection.

this
is inadvertent, this.
an accident of malady,
my stubborn, mum mistake.
i can't relieve you any better than
a baby, changed and wailing;
the hurt has swelled as big as infants' mouths
and ranging.

linear

the problem with a line
is not its length,
but its tendency towards completion,
i think.
what works best is unencumbered ends--
a refusal to embed.
with one foot fixed and not the other,
tangles mingle into knots like leashed dogs that
circle owner's legs Magelleanly,
ankles tethered into anchors:
plant the flag
take notes
summon awe like scholars.
for all the dashed lines i follow solid,
i can't help but notice
how unseen scenery seems
like all the places
i've already been.

things the canine wants:

a rock
a stick
a razor, fallen to the bathtub floor
the last remains of 3-D glasses previously eaten
the pin
the pencil
pen
the girl
the squirrel that jumps
the rubber toy in chunks
the chip that fell
the drop of salsa following
the piece of broken glass
that thing, you know, that twists around the ends of bread bags
the bread bag
the bread
the boy upstairs
the man inside
the book you love
the book you need to read
the article you haven't finished yet
the list you wrote and can't remember
the dental floss
the needle
some thread
the sock that's clean
the sock that's dirty
the pillow stuff
the pillow
the couch, the rug, the living room, the kitchen, closet, everything upstairs
the bee outside the window,
the cockroach scuttling under cracks
the thunderstorm
karate kids
familiar women
unfamiliar men
the thunder
earthworms
dirt
the memory of meat
the treat
that cat outside
that cat outside
that cat outside

drawing: age three

(bone, hole, mouse/cat/dog, dog with teeth, liquor?)