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In the rooms you picked up what you liked, like shells on a beach.

We chose to stay in the brutality of that night, even as the girls walked away.

It almost makes you cry, to know that you are no longer needed.

I hear myself giving advice in my father’s voice: Take the emotion out.

Chase Twichell

After nearly a year of dating, I never stopped thinking of that other boy.

They’d been together an hour, but they were an easy threesome.

He was warm that way, always tender, and maybe that’s the worst part.

He glowered even as a little child. Maybe because he has your bad eyes.

Forgive my father, the promise that he made, that I could turn all this to gold.

I try to imagine him wanting only a Toblerone bar for his birthday.

The three of us share a myth, that I’m fragile as old bones. My parents speak in low voices—about me, I’m pretty sure. I watch the waitress, trying to remember how to flirt. I take off my mask.

The boys searched for their father, lost somewhere in the Olympic Range.

Spanish men. They whispered and whistled. It made her jumpy.

I crouched just like my mother burying nail clippings to ward off curses.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

She asked, “What’s the weirdest thing you can do with your body?”

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Where my mom was wasn’t never far from the Myrtle Beach Days Inn.

She commands, under her breath, You must be the son.

A goddess was offended; her altar required my virgin blood.

Wet air. Big windsound in the leaves—a kind of prayer, maybe.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.

Ike’s voice left behind on the shore as Tina plunges in again.

Let father be a man walking to the river, ready to bargain with water.

A psychologist told me we can train our dreams. I practice each night.

There lay before us a bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of gold.

They all pivoted to face us, tan mannequins on a conveyor belt.