In woods, meant to be like a crab at the bottom  of the sea,

Ash trees—stone-naked— stripped, clear to their nodes. Wind pursuing dead leaves through life-sucked green in the yard. Your mouth, above all, the liveliest thing. 

The ambulance turned down the lane while I was mulching behind the shed  where I’d hammered four-by-fours into  a groundhog tunnel with a ten pound  sledge. I threw down the shovel, watched red light pulsing into the low gray clouds. My neighbor, who, too, had stopped, started moving again on his green tractor. We each raised a slow wave, a hundred yards away. I don’t remember his name. We spoke last fall. By the time I took a drink and wiped my face with my shirt front, litt

You are bitter black coffee at dusk, A hunger for bread to satiate, A bed of broken glass to rest at night.

I was never a good painter. 

I watch jagged rocks reflecting light At odd angles, Reminding me of the muscles in your back and  That decision I regret. Like wearing sandals in the winter, Feet stinging with each step. Numb, yet all I can feel.  Mingling Razer snakes light up green on a screen And I am jerked back to your room, An internal pounding from the unapologetic bang Of my head on the wooden corner by your bed. Smooth and cool and unforgiving  Like the history between us. The pounding is compounde

The mark of the beast sometimes flickers across their gunmetal coats.

on the fine China dinner plate: sprig  lacquered with sweet Sherry ambition, polyurethane-blanketed queries, 

Abigail Ray is a writer from Portland, Oregon, and has been published in Same Faces Collective, Maudlin House, and Call Me Brackets, among others. She recently graduated with her Bachelor’s in English and writing from Portland State University. She primarily writes poetry, lyrical essays, and experimental fiction about loser-core women that are definitely not poorly disguised projections of herself, no matter what people are saying.

My parents’ eyes lock on me the minute I enter the reception hall. A few other head turns and  lingering looks shoot my way, undoubtedly due to the show-stopping quality of my dress. Mom  picked it out for me at the department store a few weeks ago. I remember struggling to conceal  my disgust when a pink, frilly monstrosity you’d think she’d stolen from the closet of a pompous  toddler came out of the shopping bag.

imbued by a sense of blue,  berry not in lactose-less latte

Can you feel me in the silence, can you smell me in the air?

in a subterranean street   of a literary novel   set in Mexico City like those lines   folded across faces in suburbia  clipping the grass 

“The date’s going fine, right? She’s kinda quiet but whatever, cute girl in a pink dress. No complaints”

This poem is a response to one my dad wrote by the same name. It is included below. White Hair I figure you were finally caught by the old man you tried to chase away. I think I saw him too at my dusk and your dawn, in the morning after too much wishing I could carry you along. Maybe Calvin Senior came and pulled you away you wrote how smart men do this each in their own way. I know you’d never leave without a fight, never gently into that good night. But now that you are out

Rain I brace a table I embrace a name I hope I see your ghost After all this rain. My chest splits open As part of you moves in, But I’m sewn up all wrong And don’t know where to begin. Raised by the player  who knew the blues run the game I hope I see his ghost After all this rain. My head closes up As too much of you moves out, My memories sing and fade Like water in a drought. Your heart, your heart Like a strange machine gave out The heart that cried wolf, But could no lo

Two moments in time, forever in mind October 2000, sitting on the edge of the hill, what a great view A sunset, ¢1 lollipops, our hearts filled with joy "Say goodbye!" grandma yells from down below, "Five more minutes!" I reply, taking in the last sunshine glow Deep inhale, the smell of wet dirt and handmade tortillas Hand in hand, we climb down together - one last hug so tight Tears fall, "I'll see you soon!" a promise so bright March 2013, a different edge, a different view

My mother told me it was contagious, her proclivity for loneliness. When I was a boy, I couldn’t quite describe that emptiness in the pit of my stomach, that perpetual knot in my throat, that inexorable desire to be a nuisance to those who were sick of my company, that self-hatred knowing that people were, in fact, sick of my company. I was eighteen when she told me, shortly after my aunt passed away. She went to New York for a work trip, and I was left alone, left to my own

"Bob Dylan," "Hud," "29," and "Victoria PT"

My many years on stony roads have led me to the crashing edge.