I lost the important things
sweeping baguette crumbs
underneath an industrial
fan– cyclicality, the broom’s sashay
from one end of the room to
the next– sand blown from the center
of the desert, and how selfish
to keep water in the bottle
with other mouths to nurture.
(originally published in Adelaide, Fall 2019)
Ripples of water
extend into days
we are wordless
with each other.
A storm breaks,
a dog whimpers.
We hear the groaning
Earth shifting
over countless hours
into the endless sea.
I’ve had enough
of windows,
where dreams
are a quick glance
over another
unfinished drink
in the middle
of the day.
(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)
Poems are dead flecks of skin I
want people to take home
After a reading last year Jordan told me
he likes my poems but they are only
skin cells
So Jordan wants my blood
wants to syringe my heart
and keep it in a bottle
That’s what I did
then he said I want to be inside you
So he wants to wear my skin
A me hanging in a closet limp
and lifeless A clothesline
of me and me and me
to be opened like a coin
purse and slip in
Yes. Jordan says
he wants to eat me
(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2020)
If I live a modest life I won’t know what it means
when the pipes burst or the banks bust. Either means
money I don’t have. Meat the Earth has. I’ve wanted
to travel but I know airplane fuel results in polar bears
dying on dry soil. Think Coca-Cola commercials with
the Arctic night preternaturally night. No snow, no
snow, and after airtime you crave Coke.
(originally published in Quince Magazine, Fall 2020)
“I was born blown-minded
with an eye on oblivion.”
–Young Galaxy
I’ve been sitting at my desk,
no artistic talent, drawing
a primate, the universe,
a fetus, a circus, and
with each I realize I’m
just drawing myself
over and over again–
hurtling through space
and time in my muddled
mind to conclude I don’t
know shit. So all these
lines connect where?
I don’t know whether
I’m looking to God
or to get laid. It’s both
the same, really, accessing
the part of the brain that
activates to a higher calling.
Whether that’s the faith
that I exist right now!
Or I must reproduce!
doesn’t matter.
I am a goddamn mess
made of star matter
and the more I try to
laser-focus my brain
at understanding,
the more I learn
there’s nothing
there. I feel as empty
between my ears
as the space between
Earth and the moon,
but then I learn that
all of the planets
in the solar system
can fit in the distance
between those bodies?
Gray matter.
(originally published in Cacti Fur, Winter 2019)
Through the west wall
our neighbors still
decide to get drunk.
You go into the basement,
pull out a red bag–
hammer and nails.
Framed photo of your great-
grandfather, we
slam it on the wall.
We’re stuffed
with a dry night
cough. We’re stuck
inside. Finally.
A good reason
for the rain.
(originally published in Hobart, Winter 2022; republished in HAD, Fall 2022)
this is a drughouse
spilled in ink
and do tell
littlefabrics
how we’re wove
in ink tattoos
squelched and
arm in arm.
(originally published in The Broken City, Winter 2019)
I was sand, a
billion places
at once. But I
was there with
you, too, my
mind fragments
of crystal. How
to reconcile not
giving us my
all? I am now
in one field
and you are
in another.
I want to dig
myself a vast
pit and fill it
so you know
I’ve changed.
But I know
if the cups
of your hands
scoop me up
again, parts
of me will
slip through
the slits
between your
fingers.
(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Spring 2020)
My olfactory nerve already overflooded with Acqua di Gio
on business cards beneath fluorescents, I did not expect
to run into my first love in the wilderness of Black Friday,
where hard rain was people. I sought a higher ground– escalator
to the bathroom to text my crush on my TracFone, until the arms
on my watch contorted a certain way. But my tarot cards flipped
when I recognized Kristen from afar, both of us unsure,
unlike in fifth grade, on the bus to Mohican, she slept
beside me, her hair fire on my shoulder, strobe lights of a confused
adolescence that entire week. Camp ended when everyone
contracted poison ivy. How to scratch the mind until snapping
back into self– in that present, years later, I thought she might be
fate and, thus, planned a coffee date, but because I did not
carve the path I wanted to take, winter came. And went.
(originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)
Tell me your wildest
vacation fantasy. There,
we will visit our home.
I dream of caves–
stalagmite fingerprints.
The drop, the black bat,
meat. There,
we’ll forget light
and its animal skin.
(originally published in eGoPHobia, Fall 2019)