Slideshow

The trees are dark and
vertical. They make a distant
wall. Somebody says
something, then repeats
it more slowly.

*

A girl with dark hair
is talking. This bassline
is too loud. The conversation
drops another semitone, you feel
a bit sick to your stomach.

*

A half-empty glass gets
knocked off the railing, it makes
a dark star on the rocks
below. You start to make a pun
but decide against it.

*

You feel like a projection
against the house. The girl
next to you peels her shadow
off of you. Something
smells like urine.

*

You are breathing very fast.
The smell is bad; the sound is bad.
Someone confuses you
with a part of his body.
The song starts over again.

The Negatives

None of the clocks here agree with each other.

You look like a drummer; let's start a band.

They began to murmur in unison. The shadow

of the ceiling fan scraped the wall

like a tongue picks at a sore. Radiohead

were playing a concert in the basement, well,

really just one song, over and over.

They had to call the dogs on them. I like

the way you forget things, or set things

on fire. The click track was out of control.

There was a story behind this, wasn't there?

You used to tell it to me to make

my teeth fall out. No matter—the window

is black water, a dark eye

with thin ripples expanding across it, and

you're coughing like a busted amplifier.