Sunday Service

Russel Swensen (@scribblymouse)

Selected Tweets

so no i don’t exactly think there’s hope for any of us ok

ice isn’t melting btw it’s rejecting you

can’t tell if this sunshine is trying to be ironic or what

not a statue i just stay still a lot

what if you “listened to your body” and all it said was “goodbye”

the furniture seems to be a lot more on fire since i started thinking of you

*pregames with bone marrow*

my fantasy is a room you’re not walking out of

writing “who did this to you” as the caption to every childhood photo of yourself you can find

there are a lot of cups of coffee but this one hasn’t betrayed me or made me feel worthless yet

i’m the part of the story you fall asleep during

how old is your depression supposed to be before you talk about girls

i like to drive real slow like my life isn’t meaningless

what’s the yoga position where i lie down in your driveway and promise not to breathe

yelling at my blood that it’s not allowed on the bed

twisted dark fantasies about emotional stability

point a camera at me and watch it detonate

now count back from you miss her but she doesn’t miss you

every five minutes i whisper “it sounds like someone’s dying out there” and even i do not know what I mean

teaching the baby how to say yeezy

have your funeral at a poetry reading so you can blame poor attendance on the genre

put my name in your bio wrap it up in a blanket and weigh it down with rocks drop it off the pier

your heart’s first words were “no touching.”

there is cornbread in my tears tonight

i thought i was in love but it turns out i just left the oven on

gonna take your temperature by burning you at the stake

“i always wanted to fuck the most depressed cheerleader in the world”

“you’re making it worse” me every time i look in a mirror

smh if your entire body isn’t a cast you never figured out how to remove

there’s like one self esteem for every twenty people on twitter and they pass it back and forth

today i wore a canary yellow shirt so that people would know i am completely dead inside

taze me until i cum

tbh every time i look at a baby i can already tell how bad its twitter will be

#girlslikeitwhen you kill their parents trust me this one works

So You Think You Can Cum Without Crying

gonna keep buying diet coke until this vending machine is empty enough to double as a coffin

gonna raise these feelings like they’re my own

lower yr expectations lower them gently into the ground

happily married couple seeks third party to kill them

hey girl are you science friday because you are the only thing i love and it seems like you never come

how many fireflies do you have to kill to cure a depression

i look too good to wake up

IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME I’D BE FUCKING DEAD BY NOW

jealous of all the people whose iphones keep killing them

like you’d notice if the fucking rapture happened

no one who can touch a girl’s collarbone needs to build a dream catcher

people only ever want one thing from me and it is space

Bio: RUSSEL SWENSEN earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and his doctorate from the University of Houston. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Black Clock, Quarterly West, Pank, Third Coast, The Collagist, The Destroyer, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, “Santa Ana,” was released by Black Lawrence Press. His full length collection, “The Magic Kingdom,” is forthcoming (January 2016).

August 31st, 2014 / 10:15 am
Sunday Service

2 Comments

  1. A D Jameson

      These are great.

  2. Chase

      Can I buy this chapbook at Trader Joes?