Tips

it’s like my nana
used to say it’s
garbage in
garbage out

if you listen
to the right music
eventually you’ll
kill yourself

pair of nails
through your eyelids
a humming donut
of devil energy

silver-blue
boombox an orb
appearing in the center
of a bedroom floor

this was the year when
shooting up
your school became
cool as fuck

when all the fault
lines had a route
that didn’t lead
right back to us

but reached away
to touch an other
place we couldn’t see

the fear of what
it means to touch
ourselves as we are seen

Zach Peckham is a writer and musician from Massachusetts who quit his marketing job to study poetry in Ohio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in jubilat, The Lowell Son, Happiness Pony, @tuffpoems, Poetry Northwest, and on the Academy of American Poets website. He is a candidate in the NEOMFA where he works at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.