you either get wrinkly or you get fat

and everybody in the Lucas family has a belly

hot food and song undo this sadness

Some figures (2, 3, & 6) have been redacted from this catalog due to copyright constraints. The gallery apologizes in advance for the inconvenience.

I loved the way she captured light in glass, and so I asked, Could we paint together?    

In case the car starts on fire while he’s hang gliding, Everardpins a note to his love’s chest 

The lady on the bus has eyes all over this city,

big and blue and leaking.

An application asks, “Have you ever been suicidal?” Offers two options: Yes or No.

On a lazy, last-gasp-of-summer sort of day, I linger on the patio of a south Asheville bakery. Leaning back in my chair, I marvel at the warmth, at the music drifting over from a nearby brewery, at my good fortune for having arrived here on what would have been, COVID notwithstanding, a perfectly normal Friday.

The girl’s mother takes her to sharpen her fingers into knives on her seventeenth birthday. Outside the salon, a flock of teenagers congregate, examining each others’ hands in the sun.

Flashlights clicking.

“I can’t believe the power went out, right before the big game.”

“Who would have thought?”

“Well, what are we going to do now?”

My wife and I were sick in November. Historically a healthy pair, we’d unexpectedly fallen victim to the pandemic all over the news, an abstraction that we could now experience as reality from the comfort of our home. 

No matter what the disembodied chose at the end of the incarnate line, they regretted it upon return.

On my first day, they put me on novellas. A lot of the greats got their start here, the manager said. After a few months’ experience, you’ll work your way down. 

Invisible art, missing people, killing your darlings, clip show coherence. From the mundane to the life-changing: something’s missing. Something, whether fingers, parents, scent, love, or words—somehow, somewhere, they’re gone. Lost. Taken. Dead. Missing.