the Reserve longer
to get lost in
steep trails will sleep well
balancing spaces
in extended
phone conversations
to cut yesterday
my bike
summer with roads how
long all
the distant presents
all precautions everywhere
of daily life for a long time
(originally published in Modern Literature, Spring 2020)
up treacherous stairs at the end
of January to sit in the hidden
room at the back of the Tap
where we question west elm
shelves the green-lit décor
a chicken bone and Catholic
school what I have learned
is instead of being funny
just talk about triangles
hanging on white walls
the weird will happen
math emotions a geometry
like which-year-Texas-
Instrument calculator
you wrote 80085 on
was it 84 was it 83
what I learned everything
is improvisational
the drink selection
the sidewalk ice the
weather our atoms
bouncing off each
other’s atoms in
quantum uncertainty
where will this go
if we sew shut our
fervent minds and
listen to what we
don’t know next
will ever happen,
ever
(originally published in Stickman Review, Winter 2022)
I reach out– longing for connection.
When surrounded by seagulls, I look
for the first semblance of friend. Not
that we have much to anchor anymore,
conversationally. Dolzani’s English class.
I didn’t read assigned books. Didn’t
become The Old Man and The Sea. So
many years to make safe passage. My voice
was a heavy, closed hardcover, whispering
through class as pages turned, and here
I am, strange and estranged, gazing out
over the Pacific, waiting for your response
on my seashell phone. Any sign of humanity
meant I would try. You never answer, anyway.
I unmoor my flaming boat to the coming
monsoon, scrape my hand against burning
plank to gather first ashes. I write my name in
soot. I hold my breath and swoosh into the next
life: the hold-on-to-me, the help-me, the drive-
aimlessly-through-your-twenties until arriving,
at last, at another confused island, a new
decade of drifting through cloudless nights.
(originally published in Cacti Fur, Summer 2021)