Hounslow 1997
I am swallowed up in a red winter coat.
Dad is collecting me for the weekend.
Spin
I don’t remember if the bottle was a Coke or a Fresca,
just that the glass was cool against our hands
in the warm, empty tool shed.
Brother
though a child, you became a god
when you lit your first fire.
learning almost nothing to be unburnable
was how you learned love, finance,
the charms of delinquency, and war.
Rumors
Someone gets mad. A boy
brings a gun to school
and plans to use it
seventh period.
Binge
I make an excuse to go to the village. I grab my bag—the one with the zip-pocket stuffed with scrunched coils of undone Polo rolls and loose mints buried like eggs in a nest of popped blister packs, body spray, cheap lighters, and a bottle of that green Lidl hand sanitizer that eats all regretful scent except the chemical afternotes of itself.