Competition is a cedar you settled
with. Because I was digging holes
all over Texas rooting you another
tree. Oh, Fort Worth could’ve been
the birthplace of a forest, but Austin’s
expanding rapidly, oaks overgrown
with branches lugging encumbering
ambitions. I know. I’ve lived
in Nashville. Los Angeles.
There is no life of transience
without large cockroaches
squished on sidewalks.
(originally published in Ariel Chart, Summer 2019)
I want to go to the movies I want to see people
act like people I don’t know enough about
anything to know if I know about anything
except let mise en scene keep my mouth
watering I am happy to drop yellowy
popcorn in my lake to swim the butter
and I want to laugh like a lake and ripple
in the conflict of others because if this
is the life I am meant to live one
of darkness surrounded by strangers
I want us to at least see the same thing
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Fall 2021)
My love, I want to show you this strange moon:
a quilted wine and blue, half the charcoal sky–
but you are playing a game, a Crash Bandicoot
offshoot where you are a humanoid frog who jumps
and spins across 3-D landscapes. I ask you please
come outside there is a nervous crowd gathering
for this cosmic anomaly. But no one dies because
I wake and recall my childhood summers spent
on the cold, brown, teddybear carpet of my basement,
hands on controller, eyes mesmerized by polygons.
My father would slowly descend the stairs then ask
me to walk with him– as he often did the last
years of his life– that there was a whole world
out there, the world, and if I would walk once
with him he would show me, please, just once.
(originally published in Vagabond City Lit, Summer 2019)
under salmon sunset
a box truck
approaches
wearing red lipstick
in a car we celebrate
forks and merges
drivers get to choose
God
but the Devil was clear
kept the chimney burning
to keep the world alive
in time He will
learn to play
His guitar
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Fall 2019)
There is a universe where I am
a barista or videographer or marketer
or astronomer. I could have said no–
I skipped an interview– when you asked
if I would come to Palm Springs. When
you said you know what this means if you
go, I could have pivoted and returned
to painting my rented room in sadness.
This matters. This doesn’t. This cyclical
current. Of course we’d split, even after
you said– eating biscuits at the bakery–
the universe gives what you put in.
Yes, perhaps. But I am alive, formless,
confused as the river flowing opposite,
a flight response to a hurricane I would
never fight. I stayed in Seth’s basement
for a week after. Who walked upstream
out from it was never relevant, anyway.
(originally published in CERASUS, Summer 2021)
First thought every morning was you: we were to graduate,
set young wings to flame, then fly– but we moved back to our
childhood homes where, instead, wildfires raged through long
landlines, burning our ears in hours of silence miles apart. We tried
to make us work, but the jobs we hated we did not know how to leave.
Me, at the studio, taking photos of lovers; you, at the call center,
straining voice to strangers. How we slept through the same sunrise
in separate beds, rarely awake for the burst of morning. We tried to make
us work. We drank pots of coffee miles apart to stay awake through
the night to watch the darkness die through our windows, wary
of light, the life we had to leave behind.
(originally published in VAYAVYA, Fall 2019)
I am
& nothing
about
the murk
of love
extracted
from
my worst
(originally published in Terror House Magazine, Summer 2019)
you say a package was
stolen from your porch
I am just trying to stay out
of the rain
vent blowing frigid air
through this new home
& you tell me Robert witnessed
the van speeding beyond the jangled suburbs
as if thievery need be
so complicated
stealing happens
on the sidewalk
these blankets of concrete cracked
beneath high-rises
a UPS truck sputters past a pothole
right turn signal blinking, blinking
(originally published in BOMBFIRE, Spring 2021)
it was a game youth I walked across the bridge
above the canal to burlap fields we ran to sun
static the radiation the gravity aged us it agitated
us swish-swish in the darkroom and developed
into smudges a shake of camera to the window
to blur what we were
(originally published in Uppagus, 2019)
Chunks of chess in my brain / surgery for / inclement weather.
Sacrificing pawns for the greener good. The greener god.
I am laughing at the things you say / though they’re not funny.
Nor trying to be. But I want to be liked / and to like / and to
continue the niceties on this island. To sever the sadness / I
said I never / wanted again. But words differ from / what
happens / when you swim the sea / no shore in sight.
(originally published in COG Magazine, Spring 2019)