snake hangs slim
from taboo stick
to feast your wild
side come hither
through smoke
to lips and burn
through the road
of night then eat
a single egg and
call it your meal
for the year call
this your baby
call this your
tongue but slither
and dig your
underground
hole when you
turn away
(originally published in Euphemism, Spring 2020)
You scared the shit out of me– I am
creeping on influencers. They buy
stock-tank pools and place it in front
of suburban blue skies of suburbs.
There, the saturated grass. Watch
the rubber ducky floating in the face-
book blue water, preternaturally still.
(originally published in Erothanatos, Summer 2021)
I thought by now the whistles would warp us
to a future in peace jump me ahead of this dark
underground level Mario I have crushed
enough Koopas to keep my genocidal ancestry
whooping from their battleground graves didn’t
feel much sanctity from Arlington Cemetery
sorry when they buried my brother at Ohio
Western Reserve gravestones orderly as pill
bottles on the shelves of corporate pharmacy
what rings in my brain are the gunshots
of old white veterans fired during Clinton’s
final ceremony bullets whizzing up the sky
just to land on the dirt covering
graves of my genocidal ancestry
(originally published in Impspired, Spring 2020)
My face pressed to the window screen– black pick-up trucks
pass. A little bit of breeze is recommended to ground yourself.
Such violence in a chicken nugget. If I think about vegetable
intelligence, I will allow myself only to eat white mulch. When
becoming grass, nothing happens to the soul. Clumps of earth
inside my fingernails when I scratch at the dirt, and still I weed
myself to the idea that beauty is ubiquitous in nature. At the sky
I choke on the concept of air. That my lungs work all living
hours, ununionized, is betrayal. My desk chains me
to the dark, and still I have the heart to look out a window?
(originally published in TRIBES, Fall 2021)