mommy drank her sleepy juice the fire in her eyes had gone to embers as she glared blearily around the room a cigarette burned in the ashtray as she lit another i watched out of the corner of my eye as her head dipped then snapped back up only to raise slower when it finally […]
memories are weightless but the sweet loss weighs a ton my spine is twisted into an ampersand to give more room for her sweeping across ancillary nerve endings. my irises have adopted the half smile she would wear as she bent over in nothing but my old t-shirt knowing my eyes were locked on the […]
there is a grainy zapruder quality in stuttering black and white that plays when ever she crosses the back roads of my mind a cloud of dust wherever her dainty toes step disconstructing the strands of dna reassembling the frozen instant she walked away back and to the left my head snapped back and to […]
there are times when i close my eyes let the world fade away that i can hear the crackle of tobacco smell the earthy tones of freshly poured liquor my lips feel the phantom brush of hers my tongue numbed by whiskey my hands on the small of her back wishing to slide along her […]
It’s been 10 months since my debut book, Notches: A Collection, came out. And included in it is probably my favorite thing I have ever written. Persephone, my reimagining in poetic form of the story of Kore and Hades. When I wrote it, everything changed for me. It gave me the courage to try writing […]
seeing her again was like slipping on an old pair of glasses the world was blurry i felt out of my field of depth and in the end i was just nauseous she was like a trip to the amusement park at first it was wild every ride was something to be enjoyed remembered experienced […]
I used to be the senior technician at Dave and Buster’s. For those of you not familiar, it is a giant restaurant with an arcade filled with all sorts of games. We got to work a few hours before opening and I repaired the games while the other techs got the arcade portion ready for […]
the last cigarette machine in dallas left to rust in the back of a nautical themed bar on the edge of deep ellum a marlin with a tennis ball affixed to it’s sword point hangs down over the table a remnant of an assumed tragic accident laughter fills the near empty room of geriatrics sipping […]
there was no freer feeling as a kid than flying down the steepest hill in town on our bikes sure there was a busy road at the bottom with no real view of either direction and the river was directly on the other side but pushing off at the summit feeling the wobble as you […]
when i was a kid we would go to young’s bakery and get smiley face cookies with thick yellow glaze i always got a gingerbread man with raisin eyes and buttons down his front run run as fast as you can you can’t catch me i’m the gingerbread man the bakery is long gone but […]
i savored the flavor of your every kiss, saved them in a jar for later rainy days reminiscing when the day came, the one i feared more than any other, one draped in signage of coming soon this jar of cast away affection was all i had to fill me, emptiness became the new fuflillment […]
how many times did i stare at the faded photograph memorizing the faces trying to recall what it looked like the colors not washed out the scents the feel if i heard the voices today i wouldn’t recognize them i fear they would be as strangers to my ears that hurts a deep down pain […]
he told me stories about living in a border town sitting in the harsh sun sipping cervezas watching the dark skinned beauties in their multicolored skirts as they walked down the dusty streets around him he made one hundred dollars a month lived like a king arranging trips to send mota across the border hidden […]
got an email today about bracelets i don’t wear much jewelery but these caught my eye they make a disc on each disc they show the planets position on a certain day in a certain year a unique time stamp an array of dates flashed through my mind that are burned into my medial temporal […]
she signed every kiss with the tip of her tongue. the places along my frame that signature had travelled the parts of me marked as hers. i wrote novels of devotion with my tongue along every inch of her body new gospels of worship etched across her perfection. love is not forever but the memory […]
what we see is colored by perspective what we hear is tainted by opinion he sat on the bench watching the world, while seeing none of it, his mind was far away from where his eyes stared, lost in the sands of yesterday the first time she walked past him his heart skipped a beat, […]
i have good memories of the us that used to live but there are enough bad ones to make them taste sour so i keep the good ones locked away who needs them tainting the day
a pure distillation wildflowers cinnamon scorpion pepper a simple taste sweat beading the ceiling fan wobbles currents of air send chills on now damp skin molecules of scent trigger memories of someplace else former life former love long buried sins long lost thoughts circle a murder of crows never forgetting faces burnt places of death […]
the tank appeared empty just coral in the back i was young then impatient with a new found love of aquatic creatures not yet a man with dreams of drowning unfamiliar with the sea as a metaphor the sea had not become a she that would come later the empty tank bored me i tapped […]
when i was a kid we went to the laundromat every sunday morning back then i hated it, or thought i did we would get up early, my father and i, and get there as it opened a deck of cards and endless hands of spades or hearts or go fish to make the time […]
she didn’t remember me, no, she didn’t forget me either, instead he chose to dismember me with her mind looked past the times of smiles and joy, the laughter, the love i once thought we shared but she so selfishly kept as she walked away she remembered to tear it all apart in her mind, […]
my mind is a museum, i take guided tours through the musty halls in the quiet moments those brief seconds of peace between bouts of overwhelming sorrow and confusing seconds of energetic need those are the times i am me, like when we talked, the voices grow quiet and all there is is all there […]
after a brief reinternment due to pushing too far too fast chapter title in my life story a quick iv bag and fresh script of pain alleviators angry stares and disbelief nurses and doctors and a general sense of disapproval basically dropped off the kids and went straight to the hospital so when they say […]
i’ve got a case of the electro-shock blues zapping my limbic system controlled voltage i don’t want to forget about you just the way it all went south all my thalamuses need a good shaking up flip the switch baby help me forget my hippocampus could use some current the current state not the mental […]
she bought me a dream catcher to hang over the bed the bed she laid in with me it was her going away present to me i didn’t know she was taking a trip so i hung it over the head board right above where she used to grab and shake it until it seemed […]
she’s become a curator tiny exhibits laid out with what was once great care a fine layer of dust adorns them now like the first snow of the season when the ground is just not quite frozen she can barely remember the names just a certain resonance from each diorama here’s what’s his face sneaking […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 