we feast at the counter
by the spotless sink
Wayne says his dip
consists of things
that wish to kill us
ranch cream cheese
and gouda
we’re like great
preferring this
to powerful people
who don’t know
us
yet wish
to kill us
(originally published in Train River, Fall 2020)
If the last four years were hell
the next four will be worse.
The establishments not satisfied
with anyone satisfied. Whoever
can stomach it must be rich. I am
sifting through white crystals
for old chunks now. We dump
what we must, our masks in
the wash with the comforter,
rooms still frigid in the morning
before the sun drives its way
to work. We’re home now, clocked
in nothing doing, worried for
the cat, the cupboards. He is not
eating and the vet won’t see him,
we don’t see the vet. This is the
process, the distance, the drape,
the bandana. Peep our filthy
hands. We no longer need them.
(originally published in Dreich Magazine, Summer 2021)
I see men being men on the road to lovemaking
you left me because you’re not news every time
in the same time that’s how I am when I desire
no one is too thinky
I am still a junky for it I am violin aloneness
I spin I spin to you
you smoosh my love when we are there at the same time
when how it is is the same every time
this one to know us is true
love is meant to be thinking
to know how to flower greater things across the ocean
leaves so white you can’t have me my eyes still have you
this is the tress to thread
love being a river and being with no name
when you’re with me inside me
tubes sucking the dream of myself
I hate that I still have me
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Summer 2020)
a crow
glances edge of
frame
the moment before
the boomerang
reverses
(originally published in Beatnik Cowboy, Winter 2021)
nights of cats following cliché heartbreak
both of us single lonely ditched by friends
we smoked weed in your empty pizza
box apartment of turquoise walls I threw
myself into the cats were fighting over
string and I asked how often must we
wake up not in love you said we have
been recently while our phones lit
our faces grim in the dark of tangled
connection I wanted you to come
to Cali with me and we went west
but you stayed in Colorado to smoke
the mountains high and higher clouds
unreachable
(originally published in Setu, Summer 2020)
Because the patient gives me the wrong address–
because when I call my manager, she tells me
keep searching– I sprint with cheesy tortellini
down eleven dim flights, cursing broken
elevators. On the ground floor Panera
calls again and asks where are you? I say
in the hospital. After silence, I clarify– for
a customer– and she tells me who you seek
is next door. I lament the time I wasted
driving this black bag in a small vessel
to the wrong drop-off, and even more, time
spent walking from one mistake to the next.
Hospital lights hue everything sickly.
What is it I am trying to deliver? I look
through the inventory of my belongings
and, after the hand-off, bear the lightness.
(originally published in Freshwater Literary Journal, Spring 2021)
We cook corn over the mountains–
smoke billows from grill
to everlasting wildness.
I take a pan and season plants
with what is deemed appropriate:
water, oil, roots. We brought
the shovel to dig
a feast deep enough for us.
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)
I wish it were impressive, my insistence
to gnaw at the root of what clings to me,
whatever doubt’s the day’s soup.
A kind of droning in my soul that rings
and bleats. Speaks for me when I must
be spoken for, my might in a cave.
I long sometimes for lonelier days. Too much
noise in the knock of someone else’s luck,
a hardwood for human myth.
Grant me humility to do no wrong. I had a year
to get everything right, and still I waited past
the crow’s deadline, let the line fly
recklessly into the lake.
(originally published in Nauseated Drive, Winter 2022)
refractions on a shadow still the boom
mic lingers overhead / birthday candle
lit in the dough of Hofbrauhaus pretzel
white / purse of gold in a Fogo de Chau
group / illusions you with wealth / blue
yellow balloons framing the window at
Pitt dandelions beneath the barbed wire
public / I’ll be in Charleston alone / on
Thursday away from public / stairs tick
infestations / lift your pitcher-hands in
victory when faced with fall’s expanse
(originally published in Thin Air Online, Spring 2021)
driving in circles everyone talks
about the same thing love weather
politics rain this summer gone
in a flood another day awash
in the lust pitter-pattering
off the black hot concrete
incalescent the days we
drive in circles around
each other lip symbols
tiny trinkets the tiny purple
piggy bank I bought for you
from a quarter-slot machine
in a mall outside Youngstown
(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2020)