A swastika, black and bold, was etched into the skin of my lover.
“What the hell is that?” I glared into his eyes. I searched for the answer so it wouldn’t be said out loud.
“You know what it is.”

The medicine you gave me was a Mitsubishi driving on my
           tongue,
green pyramids in my palms, left stigmata stains,
but my feet were clean,
and the day was an enemy
that cut out our eyes and
rolled them like marbles down the drain.

…having once again indulged ourselves in a steeply uplifting dose of Dr Essler’s remarkable cocaine, we took off outdoors to join Betty. Wouldn’t it be fun to have another howling orgy out there in the pool? Of course it would. Betty would surely agree, given how she was lying there like an advertisement for pool orgies.

I reach for the bottle and my mother quacks in protest. I try to tilt it so I can drink without my lips touching the glass. The wine is warm and fizzy, acidic and sweet. It reminds me of sick.

In this anorexic air, cracked skin under layers upon layers, we’ve no shelter save those psychological bunkers we burrowed long ago but do not mistake yourself as half of we.

One O’Brien summer party comes like shrapnel out of the vault. High, drunk, kids, music. One of my first dates with a new, crazed redhead. She slumped against that huge, gnarled tree; wrapped arms part way around it, sweating can of Bud in each hand.

The girls along the river were of flawed beauty, specialty mollomars and apricot jams that ended up in Jack’s 99cent Store, backward-glancing girls too unstable to work at Nails Nails Nails or Costco.

I remind myself frequently that my lover is not the love of my life. But there is no denying that he is the lover of it.

I have enough scars on my body to make a Frankenstein doll. I can’t seem to stop cutting. But I want to live. That’s a lie too.

My lips are thin. My eyes are blue.
“Mama, what should I do with my life?” I ask my mother, the teacher.
My mom says, “Do anything, but don’t be a teacher.”
“Really?”
“Be a hooker.  Don’t be a teacher.”