How angular your body is and how much I want to touch you[1], where are the cookies in the pantry, I really like those chocolate covered Belgian ones, when will this bikini look good on me[2], I hope I don’t get a tan- I like that you’re so tanned, what dress should I wear next Thursday for Yom Kippur services[3].

Your voice is breaking now, as an adult, and I find that sometimes when I call you you sound like a man and I’m not sure if I like that, I’m sorry I keep falling asleep in your bed when we’re meant to be talking[4], I wonder what we’ll be like when we’re older and if this will last, it’s funny when you play Bob Marley outside, your neighborhood is so nice and all the houses are so big[5], that time you showed up with roses on my birthday a year ago[6] and the jungle gym afterwards, how you told me you lied and your mom wasn’t coming to pick you up so could you come over to my house.[7]

Would you notice if I wore that plaid skirt again and what it meant[8], could we have Caesar salad at the Daily Grill and talk, what are our conversations about I can’t remember[9], I want to be with you on the couch inside because it’s starting to get cold and the leaves are blowing on my face, can we sit on your white couch inside and avoid your dog and listen to your turntable while I put on your sweater until it’s time for me to go.[10]

_________________________________________________________

[1] You weigh 135 pounds and have collarbones like an aristocratic 17th century Augustan painting, in the shadows they are chiaroscuro and I want to put my tongue between the dip in your clavicle

[2] Your father asked you what you wanted for dinner at the beach and then turned to me and said I know you haven’t eaten. I didn’t know what to say. Yes, you noticed.

[3] A Shiksa in the temple, I cried, profusely, when they talked about forgiveness and thought about my father and when I would forgive him; if; when, if I could, I could find him; what I would do if I found him; the deluge of tears made your family wonder if I was ‘okay’.

[4] I like napping in your bed as the music plays and the trees through your window in the summer look like a painting, I thought, when I was really high from that shit you bought on vacation. Everything was mauve and folk and you were my face.

[5] When those people had a keg outside on the fourth of July; when we went sledding down the hill in that park we could never find again; when we broke up and I parked outside your house waiting for you to come outside to kiss me

[6] You said you could smell my perfume a mile away and you knew I was coming but I guess upon reflection that meant I was wearing too much perfume

[7] Your chest on my chest was the most exhilarating sensation I had had up to that point in my entire puny life.

[8] You did, and how you did, and how that skirt would recur again and again

[9] For hours we talked on the purple phone in my room cause cell phones were too expensive and I took a picture of me talking to you on the phone that night, how nice my teeth looked and how bright my eyes-

[10] The headlights in the driveway are the last thing, always the last thing, even after it all.

_

Paige Gresty

http://upliterature.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/paige-gresty-every-september-since-2005.pdf

i am gripped by the memory of wet april afternoons walking down wisconsin avenue from tenleytown metro and i am wearing a puffy pink vest from the gap that i didn’t really like but you did, walking along to the deli with the pickles and eating a pickle and feeling guilty; i am remembering one april afterwards and you morosely opening your garage door at one in the morning in your boxers and i was so mad that you couldn’t be bothered to put on any clothes and you were so mad that i had bought a new dress because we weren’t supposed to be thinking of each other, but yet here i was; i remember the first april when you surprised me on our anniversary and i was wet from the shower and you spilled candle wax on my carpet, and after things were over the candle wax was still there and i picked at it in the vain hope that it would be gone—that second april i bought a long necklace chain with hearts on it and as we were fucking i said i love you and you literally stopped and looked at me and got off and you were still hard and i was both saddened by the fact that you would stop fucking me because i said that and simultaneously really impressed that you managed to stop mid-thrust with a hard-on; i am walking with you to the metro after my exam and im wearing that black dress that you think makes me look really hot and we’re going on a date to dupont circle but when someone asks us where are you going your friend just replies obviously they are going to fuck and we laugh but are also extremely uncomfortable— sitting in your backyard everything so cool and sad and i love you in a way that is terrifying for me to think about now, i loved you so much that i wanted you to never leave me and i wanted to always be with you and although i now know you are not a good person i am still sometimes so sad to think that i loved something so much that doesn’t exist anymore, how can something i believed in so much not exist anymore; that second april when i gave a guy from my high school a blowjob in a playground parking lot and i was so angry at you that i texted you ‘i just blew some dude’ and you called me a slut and then cried and sent me an email about how you stayed up all night holding my picture in your hands and i didn’t want to be anything but yours and i couldn’t find anything that was mine anymore because you made yourself me and i made myself you… that first april i listened to it raining outside of your window as we lay in your bed, the nicest bed i had ever been in and you made these little intakes of breath like a child about to be fed and it made me want to throw up it was so beautiful and i knew i was doing something to please you, instead of in that second april when i was on my hands and knees and i was blowing you and you asked have you been practicing and i said huh and you said cause your technique is way better and i stopped and asked was i bad before and you said no its like you know how dustin hoffman is really good in some things, but then he’s amazing in midnight cowboy it’s like that and i didn’t understand why you would compare a blow job to dustin hoffman but i took the compliment anyway; that first april when we would turn up the sound of the television in your basement and have really loud sex in the hopes that your family wouldn’t hear it but they definitely probably could hear it especially when we would intentionally try to make each other laugh by screaming the weirdest sexual things that we could think of like fuck me like a pack of puppies or when you would insist on having normal conversations in the middle of sex about mundane things and i could not stop giggling; i am trying to think of who you are now and who you were then and i don’t think we even really knew each other because how could we have known who we would be then but i can’t stop remembering spring mornings and being yours and being so confident that you were mine, whatever that meant then.

_

Paige Gresty

http://upliterature.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/paige-gresty-every-september-since-2005.pdf

my eyes itch because of the tears

the weather is changing

the world is shaking in my bathtub although I never take baths

the frame of the house twists when people have sex on the floor below me

a real fire recorded years ago is now fake to me via netflix

a bomb went off and a dozen people didn’t even notice

I can hear the rain on my windows

my house plants are doing alright

I have a bookshelf with things I say I want to read but never get to

scores of people will refuse to yield

there is a high demand for blankets among those who can’t afford them

30% efficiency is standard

there are plenty of open spaces that would look nice with trees on them

a farmer is shooting a loyal dog

a ridiculous number of kittens are being born right now

my kitchen is full of dishes with crusted food on them and I’m not eating because I dread having to actually wash any of them

many people fight hangovers by drinking again

I had a bloody mary with breakfast

a subway train is stalled in a tunnel and no one mentions their fears about not having enough air

it feels like there are more wells for oil than there are for water

I am going to cover something in hot sauce because the burn feels nice

no one touches my pens outside of my own apartment

the street is lined with cars and I am afraid of all of them for numerous reasons

I recognize people I have never met

I don’t know what to do

_

Scott Krave

http://www.scribd.com/doc/120709689/Beaches-of-the-big-north

I spent two months brooding.

About a 30-pack of Trojan condoms.

In your nightstand.

There were only two Trojans missing.

I thought about asking for them back a lot of times.

I drafted ~17 texts to you about them.

I even dialed your number once.

It wasn’t about the twenty something dollars.

I wanted to ask you to throw them away.

I kept imagining other guys using them.

I told my roommate about this anxiety.

He asked if he could write a screenplay about me.

I guess it is kind of funny. :(

_

Willis Plummer

http://willisplummer.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/fuck-im-that-one-guy-from-that-one-tv-show.pdf

imagine an orgy large enough to render all world governments obsolete. now make your dreams a reality. you have a facebook, probably. dont say it isnt possible

i cannot believe that people still watch television so i am going to pretend that they dont. this is how it starts, denying reality. this is how people go insane. if you just dive in maybe you can maybe just love it a lot

a quick confession: my dad invented the genre of radio commercial where a kid wins a spelling bee by spelling Quality with letters that make up the name of a business and im sad about it

but in spite of hardship, ive had my fair share of innocent thoughts in my life. heres one right now: being warm can be fun sometimes but other times not so much

ultimately the most important part of your life is being old because thats the last part. ibelieve this but im not sure if im looking forward to it or not

_

Heiko Julien

http://www.scribd.com/doc/102952623/I-Am-Ready-To-Die-A-Violent-Death

I want to feel alive and know that I’m alive instead of asking myself if this is how life is supposed to be. Picturesque environs are not saviors when there is a perpetual state of sadness running around in vicarious circles playing catch playing tag playing stuck in the mud but these two are just stuck in a rut, dang. Fixtures of green/yellow delays are barren lands when there is no home though the same patterns of hills mounds paths and rivers are the same everywhere. Samuel began to sweat from the very edge of a receding hairline which attacks generation upon generation but just shrug it off better late than never and as they walk the intensity from the heat of the sun diminishes as do their worries as the day is soon done. The river they followed like fools ends abruptly so they set up camp on the edge and haul the not quite so worldly possessions on the ground. John and Sam take off their shoes and socks and rise their trousers to their ankles and catch fish without rods but instead their hands with the sweetened oil and fresh quality upon their hands but hell they are not barbarians, this is what you’re supposed to do. John finds rocks Sam finds branches they create the fire like a mathematical equation with the last of Sam’s lighter fluid making it complete and then all it does is burn. They eat well with full ready stomachs for tonight, they keep themselves warm with their own limbs and bodily hair and remember they are not barbarians. Half night sky is ahead with dead stars from ten minutes ago parading themselves shameless and antique, Sam and John look for their very own constellations but they aren’t there this eve they aren’t there at all but it’s alright, their ribs hold their hearts together in one big whole piece. Goodnight they say at an early time and both hope they don’t dream, mutually passed out by their own will.

_

Thom James

http://wemakeoureyeswater.tumblr.com/

We are far from home but everything is too recognisable, Johnson said. It rained and Samuel called it pathetic yet they carried on.  In a future which wasn’t all too near but not near enough to touch Johnson would be sitting under a roof with comfortable surroundings and warmed generosity around him. He would be thinking about by gone eras made that were just too much. He would remember the early wisdom and sentiments which curated the man. Johnson would glance towards an array of photographs with most in color and some not, and remember remembrance  He would leave at tick tock dead past midnight as soon as the clock strikes and write Samuel’s name into the sand until tides washed away both of them together til death do us part. If this doesn’t happen then the carnival of stars will awake and create forms and shapes and be called Samuel due to his undeniable presence  In the mean time Greenwich mean time they’re narrowly avoiding pneumonia slogging up to an abandoned house that was barely just walls which used to be a hotel motel in the countryside over looking the country hills for people who could afford to just look at the earth and feel satisfied. Most do not feel satisfied until they have taken the earth for themselves as a leaving present but everyone is rot rot rot rotting away. They felt like calling this home for a while because when you’re constantly moving to here and fro anywhere and everywhere is a home as long as there are a few smiles radiating. They made a small fire and put their hands towards the fire until their white skin turned pink. Until the blood rushed and screamed to be freed from the veins that held them captive. I am glad that we decided to find something better together said Samuel. There would be no other way said Johnson. No I mean really, I would be in a ditch if it wasn’t for you said Samuel.

_

Thom James

http://wemakeoureyeswater.tumblr.com/