Souvenir

A Journal

Morgantown West Virginia, 26505 United States

"I'm going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There's something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I'll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don't want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave".----Breece D'J Pancake, in a letter to his mother. 

Mike Crossley

 

 

o' to be young black & gifted

 

 

Thank god for the bullshit meter

I will never know most things



The universe makes suggestions, whatever

isn't in bloom today will bloom tomorrow

 

Don't think of hell as hell think of it as constructive criticism

To suggest, I will find you on the other side

 

this transitional self

rolling cigarettes w/ Bob, a car alarm going off

 

Thank god for Nyquil

& the special fx; don't think of your heart as beating

 

Think of it as incriminating evidence

My favorite souvenirs are scars. One beneath my right eye from 1st or 2nd grade when I ran around a corner and collided with the two front teeth of a kid doing the same. A scar on the right side of my upper lip from my mid-20s when I got into a fight and ended up getting stitches. And the final favorite is the unfinished tattoo my dad attempted to give me in 3rd grade with a sewing needle and Bic-ink. He completed the area code before I got bored and went outside to play.

Mike Crossley lives and works in Los Angeles as a computer technician. Selected publications include Swink, Columbia Poetry Review, Drunken Boat, Keyhole Magazine, Sundoglit and the final issue of the Zoland Poetry annual. He's currently working on his debut rap album.