to not wonder where their next meal
will come from– cupboards empty
one day, adorned in gold the next–
to be instantaneous in transformation–
Pisschrist into Christ, prayer into
hummingbirds singing softly on your shoulders
(originally published in Modern Literature, Spring 2020)
our laughter
snorts out
sunflowers
but pushing
glasses
up the bridge
of my nose
how you
animate
the room
keeps me
alive
(originally published in Jersey Devil Press, Winter 2022)
In the morning light that surprised in all the surrounding
darkness of the era I am only hungry for the world to change
its tune from Virus Major to Canis Minor like back when all
the sad dogs sought regular companionship through the day.
Though home is where the heart is (TJ MAXX propaganda)
the heart is home far too often, staring to the sky in need of
a long embrace from ever-shifting clouds that spread thinner
and thinner by the wings of blackbirds gloriously racing
through the whiteblue plane.
(originally published in Pendemic, Spring 2020)
For David and Anna
Rain is never insurmountable,
and the sun never gets old,
though we plan to, together,
to grow with green things
sprouting at our feet. We
watch new trees become
wise while the landscape
shifts, as it must, and though
Earth spins briskly– almost
beyond what we can fathom–
it has order, being as small
and in love as we are.
We stand on our plot
of land, firm though
flung through time and
space, the universe we
made forever expanding.
(originally published in The Vineyard, Winter 2023)
We covered ourselves in soot in my mom’s basement–
you told me you loved me but I had to move home
to have your heart. We dug holes in the backyard
but already too many buried bodies so I boarded
the plane, returned to L.A. to live at the foot of hills.
I said I’d visit sometime, up top, to overlook the ocean
I knew teeming with unspeakable life–
I could not say a word of it to anyone.
(originally published in Hamline Lit Link, Spring 2020)
Silent all these nights the dust breathes.
Beneath string lights and window triangles
a few hours before sunrise. Why wait so long
to change nothing but the thermostat? We are cold
under covers not touching each other. Our mouths
the dust breathes. In your bed beneath string lights
minutes before sunrise. The world outside a purple
lip. Everything the light touches, chaps.
(originally published in The Oddville Press, Summer 2020)
Each time I come home a little something
erodes, a smooth stone rubbed against cement
for a few hours. Walking into Zub’s,
into Ray’s– used to be the crowd could be
religious for me. A thunderspark, my ego
self-distributed communion. Yes, I want
a sea of friends to greet me when I go
home, forever the place I must be
magnetized to, being the treadmill I ran
up to a certain age. I aged better than I
thought, but I aged, I. aged, T. aged, T. aged,
A. aged, M. aged, R. aged, W. aged– and live
in other cities now. The jobs and kids, the
wanting them– I acknowledge the finally
shifting tectonics beneath my feet I so long denied.
I stand at an empty table with everything extinct,
drinking Christmas Ale in the light of flickering
football fields. I play 20 Questions with myself
imagining what my friends might ask me.
Am I alive? A mineral? Furniture? Ovate,
made of fur, smaller than a bread box?
Am I a utility? Can I eat myself?
Do you call when it’s not convenient?
When you are not around?
When?
Are you an animal? Malleable? Leather?
A vegetable?
Are you something a bird might wear? A feather,
weightless as the wind?
(originally published in Marias & Sampaguitas, Summer 2021)
I always mowed the wild green hair
of lawn, eyes of corn stalking me
from across the street.
Steering Dad’s tractor in the shape
of a nose ring in my middle of nowhere,
how could I have known of tattooed bridges?
And skyscrapers
raising their fists to the clouds
in protest of the man?
(originally published in The Metaworker, Spring 2020)
Naked at the lake between salamander bodies, I kiss
your face, handfuls of sunflower on my nipples.
With mountains behind me (to my surprise)
I have become a bouquet. Verdant hills
a family– a cheetah must hide in this wilderness.
I feel emerald eyes ogling me from somewhere
in space time– even in this reunion,
I want to be as naked as a cloudless sky,
as the eroded stone I stand on.
(originally published in The Sock Drawer, Fall 2020)
Thought I was an optimist but I just watched a video with myself
and can’t stand the inflection of my voice, intoned up in ricochet
of empty space– the bouncing of a ping-pong ball off the table in
an empty room. I sniffle when I speak, stare out through open
window past your deadlocked eyes. The paradise is without
myself. To be enclosed in such close quarters with nothing
but the sound of myself saying my name, repeatedly, forever.
(originally published in Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Spring 2020)