If God is
thine god
let my country
be mine
I don’t
want
to
invade
anywhere
you don’t belong
if hunger be
a gift let it eat
my own heart
right through
the wrapping
(originally published in Delta Poetry Review, Summer 2025)
Our Ritual
I kiss the cheek of my cat
she hums in her sputtering
engine the comfort
of our ritual she twitches
on my chest stares
deep into my eyes
our noses
sniffing
each other
truth is
her teeth
reek of yesterday
but I am trying
to rid myself
of the past
year
(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Summer 2024)
The Shrubs of Doubt Were Misplaced
Still, the dogs watch me from behind
a fence when I walk the opposite route–
against traffic on Gross Street–
the view changes enough to convince
me I am in a different place in my life
with its industrial constellations,
a parking garage sparkling with hovering
hospital lights while skeleton neighbors
decorate homes for Halloween and blue
jays all seek a different weather. Maybe
October chill has knocked a new belief
into my teeth. Brick by brick I walk
by buildings of my past that survived
into the current, too, and a leaf
from an unseen tree floats
onto the chest of my charcoal
jacket. I pin it there
for the days I will forget.
(originally published in Ariel Chart, Spring 2024)
Please Don’t Come Home
we need not gather
rice in the trash sticky
with friends’ hands
still friends their hands
a question of what we collect
these rakes our long limbs
(originally published in Penmen Review, 2025)
Relief
This
gorgeous
day! I leave
my office to
join my lively colleagues– quick silence. Tense.
I say nothing, leave, and receive a text:
it wasn’t you–
PHEW– but our
buzzkill,
Will.
(originally published in Chewers by Masticadores, Summer 2024)
Super Bowl, 2025
we wore our best hunter-green waited patiently
as men took a different kind of field we craved
sustenance a resurrection a flight a waiting
by window in the purple light under wrong
tin roof what we tossed into sky we threw
away our wing-missiles pigskins of self
talons landing burrowing deep out of view
what craft drunk disturbance in the flapping
february frigidity that beat against our jackets
yours the bird slick knit on surface mine
a thready childhood blanket to keep no one
and nothing not the least of heat my heart
drinks beside you as it waits for the game
to be good but it never does and always was
(originally published in Fast Pop Lit, Fall 2025)
every time the door
every time the door
opens a burst of frigid
air gobbles the field
whole milk in my
mocha latte to
fight winter sadness
defines the palette
of the room monotone
grays beside the fire
extinguisher sign
points to a cheap
Hewlett-Packard ink-
jet no one has used
since being on this planet
I have grown purple
grapes of jadedness
thorny arms hug nothing
I have to say
(originally published in Books ‘N’ Pieces Mag, Winter 2025)
What Will We Do with What Dad Kept?
Frisbee thrown by my brother at
our mother’s home, rising with wind–
he asks a question I can’t catch.
(originally published in International Poetry Review, Spring 2025)
Summer to Spring
Sadness is a chewable tablet
in the fall. The riptide
returns with a little less
water in the hourglass
than yesterday. There is a bottle
with your name on it, a plastic
orange, pills you don’t believe in
but I believe in you and your bare-
branch will. Every year it all ends
and each time,
leaves appear again.
(originally published in Chronogram, Spring 2025)
Jesse and Andrew
were two good friends in Los Angeles,
and in last night’s dream, Andrew announces
he quit acting, though we knew him as a screenwriter,
because he found success in Ohio, and thinking back,
in reality, we were journeying toward the same adolescent
dream, green stars, and we pursued when we were heartbroken,
worn-out, reckless, and last I saw Andrew he stuffed quarters
into the jukebox at gold-lit Birds, repeating Sussudio, commenting
on every woman at the bar, and I didn’t speak up. And Jesse had
returned that day from Thailand. He was sad and I was in love.
I had a chance to see him again– last fall, New York– but he has
a kid now and I could not muster a bus, or to revisit reminiscing
the dreams we shared, what we had to wake up from
during our long, separate searches for meaning.
(originally published in Ink Pantry, Fall 2024)