sure-thing-casey

[sure-thing-casey]

This artist hand-embroiders canvas "notebooks."

[sure-thing-casey]

the grief of growing

[sure-thing-casey]

Charleston, Again

killing time on the peninsula I meet Lucy on the corner of Line & Hanover the butterflies of it’s been too long she takes me to the marsh and the stars and the early Magnolias asker that I am I ask knock me out wind chime and church bell lull me into staying make me miss the last flight out

Casey O’Brien, 2025

[sure-thing-casey]

I told Molly about the moths and how I’ve not had a single second to myself since they arrived.

[sure-thing-casey]

Emily Dickinson, from her poem titled "1188," featured in The Emergency Poet

[sure-thing-casey]

The Impasse

I looked for you in the sky but you’re not a bird you’re long-worked by worms

you’re the impasse between me and the far bank of this river where the fire hasn’t yet caught

you’re at my back like the sun my skin so fair so bare

you’re at my back like a knife

I’ve twisted you into the twine around a butcher-bound swine

I have disgraced you who held me under both of love’s wings one to ricochet rain one to teach flight

you spent your life as a shield and when bested a salve

in your death I have made you the cutting thing

I have let your memory become too much for me

Casey O’Brien, 2025

[sure-thing-casey]

Paywall

I’m so bored inside your lore I’ve been spending time on r/Mattress r/Mold r/Aldi and keeping myself out of your reach maliciously

I hold my mystery over you with the stopping power of a brick wall of a paywall

wouldn’t you like to know?

Casey O’Brien, 2025

[sure-thing-casey]

Again Small

in the shower running scenarios the one where there’s a shooter on the Green Line the one where I explained it to her better the one where gods clock in for their shifts the one where the water wars have come stateside

and then I hear the real world at the door a cat clawing and I know just what he needs just what to do

life is again small small as dinner time small as a back scratch small as five minutes on the balcony to breathe at birds

Casey O’Brien, 2025

[sure-thing-casey]

I'll gnash it up -- that pretty little skull,

while whimpering under the pressure of a mouth full of anger --

my white fur bloodied by alabaster fangs, cast crimson --

I am the rabbit bearing the wolf's teeth --

a predator and prey, to my own machinations --

I fill my belly, full, while being swallowed whole.

V. Rue, 2025.

[sure-thing-casey]

Don't call me Pizza and DON'T tell me what to do.

[sure-thing-casey]

How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?

Richard Siken

[sure-thing-casey]

One by One by One Last One

[sure-thing-casey]

I try keeping my hands at my sides, not holding onto you SO TIGHT...

I'VE ALWAYS HAD A DEATH GRIP ON MY WHOLE LIFE!!!

[sure-thing-casey]

Latent Lager

in the hollow eerie damp Valhalla rooms of dating in my 20s the soapless sinks the ever-easy, ever-fleeting LSD enlightenments

sleeping in half-safe houses I made cots out of copies of Infinite Jest and War & Peace and pillows out of laundry tried to rest best I could woke up wired went on my way whichever way the left half of This Must Be The Place or Kid A still spitting from a system whose right side had come unplugged an easy fix that nobody will

incense and metaphor like chalk, like dew or oil or semolina clinging to me on a walk of shame I called female empowerment sexual liberation agency adulthood chewing spearmint from the curbside community garden toothpaste for trying times swallowing the neighborhood weed by weed

whole days after in blue-lit fantasies vampires, wizards true love heroes arcing anti-heros screen-stealing latent lager re-foaming on the way out combatting acidity with the basics surviving to see another doom another don’t tell bad bed room

Casey O’Brien, 2025

[sure-thing-casey]

Maggie Smith, “Wild”, Goldenrod

[sure-thing-casey]

This drawing reminded me of sure thing's song Another Way Home 🥹

[sure-thing-casey]

Through Bone

Casey O'Brien, 2025