The Stonewood mall in the late-1980s had been a site of several aspirational misfires to fit in, be seen.

In Delaware Water Gap, I met a stranger I’d been looking for since Georgia. We both stayed the night in town, at a donation-based hostel in the basement of a church.

Online Exclusive Poetry from Fargo Nissim Tbakhi

a man gives just enough / to thunderous applause / and we made a statue/ of it.

I vaguely knew about Dua Lipa before I saw her in concert: pop star, Albanian, that hit single with Da Baby. Mostly I’d come to associate her with my friend Isaiah.

He left the door unlocked, in case I arrived before he got back from teaching. I thought I’d timed the drive from Durham to ensure an appearance well after school let out, but he didn’t answer when I knocked and it was quiet and dim in the apartment.

All she wanted was to look like all the other brown girls. They were everywhere, versions of the girl she’d prayed to look like in high school. Girls whose bodies and faces she craved. Girls she wished she could be. Girls her mom hated that she resembled.

I dream that Hoseok is my bus driver. We hightail a heist at the British Museum, returning stolen art to their rightful owners.

At the end of our fourth date, Amy and I have our first kiss. SEVENTEEN’s “Left / & Right” autoplays on YouTube in the background.

She worked in a supermarket before Showing women the way to the leeks, soaking the mop, affixing stickers to the cheeks of apples

Singing always ended with a death in this house.

beneath the night’s embroidery, / hold me.

Love is an improbable / shaking / of hips / on a dancefloor called Nevertheless,

His beard uncombed / as starlight. His crime couldn’t sing / without a tongue

i open my hands & eat the bird inside the ball of light, the song of the bird of the devil burns a hole in my body & out of it a streak of feathers

You can believe it or not, all of this / heartbreaking / drag

On the eve of Phoenix’ 23rd birthday, we sing, all the / furniture pushed up against the balloon-adorned walls of / their living room, the New York kind, compact, quaint a / broker might say when he is trying to sell this fantasy.

My father said there were no other / words like the compound words / in the Armenian language.

Forget the finger-flipping road rage, smile for the tiny waving palm. Bobble-hand Pope Francis figurines for your dashboards are available at the Madonna Shop. We got the rosaries, t-shirts, decals, key chains, all the official items. I got six rosaries.

Elsewhere, some later year, I’ll try to be good. Today I don’t care.

we can all agree / no jobs for clouds / unconscious drifters