this country music’s gunshots slinging through the wind wrapped around Anytown, USA
where I’ve never been anywhere outside my own mind traveled everywhere within this bag of
skin and blood bound to family I become further and further away from each day I bleed out my
own legacy owned by money by the river by the body bags I see everywhere I see a witness
(originally published in Moss Trill, Winter 2022)
my body was destroyed
to confuse the witness
red feathers fell
in dust and dirt
I am not compatible with the moon
I kiss my mouth
illness has become a tooth
return to the deep pit
black in its whole
(originally published in Setu, Summer 2020)
praise the underwater statue
at the aquarium it looks like Mary
mother of– mother of– there is no
statue inside the mind standing
eroding inside spacetime what
a cliché (your reflection) magnified
you stare above into great white
light illuminating water’s new
life (forms of the past forms
the past) sentient beaming
in its own extensive space
(how to fill the frame
of mind) where I want no
other self to suffocate
(originally published in Plato’s Caves, Summer 2020)
nights were alive with music
wine crushed coffee bones faded
light to sleep dustballs curled
were swept away
(originally published in Winamop, Winter 2023)
Rich man, I see you
leaving the city
in a vehicle for play.
Where are you going?
Outside megalopolis:
fields, fields,
grassland farms,
corn on the cob.
I know the road
seems infinite–
a bag.
Attach new tires.
Complete the body.
You have only one.
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Spring 2021)
we inflated important
words empty laughs
being sound balloons
attached to inflatable
poppable hearts buy twelve
in a bag for a dollar eggs break
the yolks watch that grease
pour into morning pans
(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)
The cafeteria was too
massive yet still the size
confined. Don’t want to talk lunch
meat. Or Drew at the table, harping.
He is inconsequential so why do I
mention him, twenty-some years
after? The bullies are the ones
who stay. I got smacked in the head
by a basketball there. The only fair
fight’s a food fight. Today, he’s
famous. He doesn’t know I have
this story to tell. I
drifted in and out of consciousness
for a week after. I floated
in the river, involuntarily.
That version of me drowned.
I never saw him again.
(originally published in The Scop Magazine, 2023)
blue house
with a blue
tall weed
sunflower heart blue
snake on the window
board half in half out half
void no sun no blue
the sky fence
hill inside blue
not blue no
blue is the fire
smoke and eggplant eyes
blue death in drawings
a deep blue wind and water
dirt on my face and hands
cobweb and dust blue dream on blue
is purple is blazing eyes in your skull
is my skull same face different
blue flat and bright light
blue silk on blue bed
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)
Clink your skull against my skull.
Tulip glasses in the fog at a winery.
The pale white of a wedding dress–
you wouldn’t call me Western,
would you? I’m warm at the brain
center. Leave your soft red mark
on my red mark so we can walk
slowly in the grass toward the fence
that keeps a single deciduous tree
beside the blue barn where chickens
are kept against their wild wills.
(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)
I was asked to write a poem
to read at your wedding.
I have been writing for weeks.
I don’t know what I’m trying to do
but I know it’s something new.
Mostly the poem has become my life.
Mostly it’s a poem of longing
for what the poem in me longs for.
Mostly it is a poem of the fight between desire
and desire.
Mostly it is a poem of desire
from the poem’s point of view.
Maybe the poem is a poem of love.
Though like most loves, the poem is a little
exasperated.
The poem seems at the moment
to be in the middle of a struggle.
The poem says the poem is struggling.
The poem says it wants more
than this.
The poem wants to try and try again.
The poem wants you
to write a new poem for it.
It hopes it will then write a new
vow.
I don’t know why I made myself
the center of this.
I don’t know why I seem to be
the only person in the poem.
How’s this: I said I was going
to love you forever.
I believed it.
I believed in it.
I didn’t expect the word forever
to seem anachronistic.
What do you mean,
forever?
Who told you
the wedding poem is for you?
Who told you the wedding poem
has to mean anything?
The wedding poem is a poem
about the poetry we dream.
I see you on the stage.
You are on the stage with me.
You found a poem you loved
and someone reads us its vows.
We try to see the future.
We try to see the poems we are
even though we might not know them.
We try to see the future.
I try to see the future.
We try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about the dream.
I try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about to happen.
It has become a poem for you.
It has become a poem for me.
This is a poem about the poem that isn’t
yet.
I struggle to see a poem
about to happen.
I struggle to see the poem about to happen.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)