justin lacour

friday, 9:59 p.m.

The cooks stop working, stick their fists in the pot of marinara sauce, and punch each other in the chest, leaving bright red stains on their aprons.

It’s like proto-paintball, I think, lighting a cigarette by the screen door.

A fog is filling up the alley mixing with my smoke. I hum primitive songs of love as if it were my real job.

sunday, 1:04 p.m.

My roommate is stoned, eating mashed potatoes straight from the pot with a wooden spoon, and watching golf on TV.

I want to tell him about the mustard seed.

Like “Ryan, have you considered the mustard seed? You know it starts out as the smallest seed, but then grows into the most ginormous plant.”

Not to convert him, so much as to change the pace of everything in this apartment, as if just thinking so could let enormous vines smash through the floorboards, wrapping around our legs and appliances, and we would be changed. friday, 8:37 a.m.

A fox wanders out of the thicket and starts walking on the sidewalk by the English Department.

A secretary sticks her head out of a window and yells at the fox to leave the poor squirrels alone.

(Yelling at the fox for being a fox) saturday, 4:00 p.m.

I’ve never seen a fox before.

My deepest hope is to fall in love and write songs against death.

I have a crush on the woman who works at the ham store. The one who looks a little like Paula Cole.

It’s hard to come up with a pretense for buying a whole ham that often, particularly when you’re single, so I just drive past the ham store slowly, listening to trip hop and questioning whether it is better to dream of starlight filtered through tinted windows or a musket shooting thorns into my naked thighs.