“But the poem itself is smarter than you. It needs to be better than the poet, and the only way to do that is to de-center yourself.”

“to name the demon is to take a cudgel to this scoured library, where the girl crams (to rote memory) the raids she withstood.”

“my mother coaxing my tears into a small offering, the soil shimmers. a mausoleum of new. / i don’t know death, only grief.”

“Sacred foods taste better, / but they always come with rules.”

“She likes to show everyone else how much of a good girl I am. How well behaved and responsible.”

“I still use money for therapyー all those pesky mommy issues alive and well. The only nightmares I have come from my obsession with horror movies.”

“Nights I stayed inside and ate alone in the dark. / Is there really any difference between planting a thing and burying it?”

“Be flattered her desire overrides her pain.”

“It’s salt and pleasure, at the end of it, before/ the daylight, that I want.”

“In this country, to be palatable / is to swim and drown at the same time.”

“I said bite / deep and her teeth felt a nerve’s fast bleed.”

“I felt the first growl my hunger / now home to a den of wolves / suppressing crimson howls”

“if i had one, i’d tie a red balloon to his shell so i would always/ know where he’s off to next. he’d never tell me why, or why he goes in his water bowl”

“while he squeezed my knuckles / examining them / like a cowboy sizing up / a horse”

“Us being/ so inseparable throughout our busy days/ shows how great a void you’d leave/ if you left, which, we have to leave eventually.”