in the vacant living room
our packed boxes never touched,
black mold assumes the ceiling fan.
it awakens every morning
wanting to spin,
to slice into the air
with its fine blades
a surgery of breathing
and the chest waits
for your steady palm
to resuscitate
those numb nights,
when our billowed heat
cooled our voluminous bits
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review)
The daddy longlegs cantilevers from Styrofoam
to sidewalk. Beetles, red-handed, scurry from a brown banana peel,
and as my gloved hands rake the dregs of recent days to neatly seal
in a new black bag, I think of how much we lose
in a week, or in the span of a second, some wayward glance,
a hush in a waning tide … no moon, no sun, no, merely
the space between … wrinkles slink into our faces.
I would give you wings, but you have risen,
already, high into infertile sky. And in the morning,
without sunrise, I will swear
the wings were broken, were never there, or were crushed,
in some tiny state of insignificance.
(originally published in Syzygy Poetry Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2)
I run from exceptional red.
Distance. Majestic arches. Loop-
de-loop of common want. Canyons,
or peace of mind. Say Zen. Say
Zion. Watch as wind-up forests
spiral from sand. Leaves whisper
to their coming branches in the vacant
hinge of a song. Don’t they
still reach for you. The lonely hoodoos
eroded in failed embrace. Treble clef,
or trouble. No beats for the metered dream.
(originally published in Turk’s Head Review – October 2015)
Every road has a finite end, just mud and sky, daytime
if you’re lucky, night looming beyond the paling horizon.
Maybe there is a barren tree, branches dancing
to a slow sonata, a love song only the two of you
know, the earth calmly listening. If you can plant
your naked feet into the ground, you will hear
the earth hum as it spins faster than you will ever
move, and though it always seems like stasis, you hope
it never stops, remains a puzzle
merely a misstep from disarray.
(originally featured in Common Ground Review, Vol. XVII, Issue II)
