“There were no windows in my bedroom, so I had to sit up and read my clock to figure out how angry I should be at my visitor. Eight A.M. I hated whoever woke me up. Had they come an hour earlier, I would have also hated their families and any household pets.”

“My friends and family had put the bedroom back together and I woke the next morning thinking, for one brief second, that it was just another beautiful early-spring day. As I sat up, though, my body began to weep even before my mind recognized the cause for grieving. The world would never be the same. Everything I would make from that day on would recall how it had changed. Everything I did for myself would be in the name of what we had been.”

“The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.”

“The pain, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn’t hate the cabinet door, I hated my life… My house, my family, my backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change; nothing new could ever be expected. It had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and surprising things, and sometimes little wondrous things, spill out in me constantly, and I can count on nothing.”

“Hate PoemI hate you truly. Truly I do.Everything about me hates everything about you.The flick of my wrist hates you.The way I hold my pencil hates you.The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.Look out! Fore! I hate you.The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m diggingfrom under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.The history of this keychain hates you.My sigh in the background as you explain relational databaseshates you.The goldfish of my genius hates you.My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.A closed window is both a closed window and an obvioussymbol of how I hate you.My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.My pleasant “good morning”: hate.You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my headunder your arm? Hate.The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My witpractices it.My breasts relaxing in their holster from morningto night hate you.Layers of hate, a parfait.Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each oneindividually and at leisure.My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validityof my hate, which can never have enough of you,Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.”

“My boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column beneath us. How could such a lonely person have been living so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company.”