Because there was no shuttle, and weak
cell service, after your wedding I drove
through the dark of some North Carolina
woods, too poor for an Uber, fuzzy
mind fragmented across navigational
satellites. I can never refuse an
open bar’s riches, a reservoir
unending despite my need for
constant refill. To thine own
self be true, I tell myself, and
for me, that’s wine and vodka
and being lost in every
direction inside a body
of metal that just does
what I steer it, meaning
a left turn when it should
have headed right and,
when I find myself later
at the same intersection,
I make the same mistake.

(originally published in COG Magazine, Spring 2019)

a hole is a hole. until a breeze
carries sand back the way I
can barely see, or at all. and there. just
out in the water. a phantom
in my mind, bobbing with the
beat of the wind that blows out into the
aquatic landscape– a
horseboat in the night. the moon is in the
moonlight reflecting the waves,
shimmering in the brown
sky. it has been days, and all
the sea lilies of the waves with their green
trees are floating by me.

(originally published in Amarillo Bay, Spring 2021)

the extinct wild roamed through the wildlands
of the heart, the beating paleozoic crust, topmost

plunge into the history books, into the unraveling
speech of lust, this lost connection (you were a great

friend) a moat afloat on limitless vodka– until
nothing left (was always nothing) I watched you

spit into a microphone forgotten music of a world
gone by, rocking a guitar, percussion at your side

(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2020)