Skinny Love isn’t your strongest (red
guitar grass blades, guzzles of beer)
the world doesn’t know your name
still I walk infinity eights through
your friend’s backyard evading dormant
dog droppings while the strumming lands
soft & sweet, butterflies on my cheek.
I’ll find a blanket somewhere to sit on
under the awning, a shade for when it rains
(originally published in Ink Pantry, Winter 2022)
I can’t stand it– in LA one year
Alex King and I were invited to
an Oscars party but in the midst
of another sad singing act we left
for tacos but still stood around on
the green and red tiles watching
a muted tv anyway I think Billy
Crystal was the host that year
the gleam in his eyes dead I
walked Sunset and Vine seeing
unsharpened pencil eyes all
these wannabes myself included
I peeked in one mirror to comb
hair and breathe into glass then
outlined my name inside a star
to leave a filthy myth somewhere
(originally published in Whistling Shade, 2021)
It is too much for a person
to unpack happenings
in the space of a day.
Yet each of us do it
invariably independent
of everyone else.
Deep breath.
Look–
(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Summer 2020)
on the highway heading home
memorial day weekend sweat
takes my shirt off lets the sun
roast me through open window
wind fanning I’m so hot I say
to each friend passing before a
calm stretch I slow down horses
merge into my lane in a white
trailer why the long faces oh
they are way hotter than me
(originally published in Erothanatos, 2021)
First were fruits drifting down like feathers,
their sugar shells & caramel centers gooey.
When the fruits stopped fruiting, she scraped
off the tree’s gingerbread bark using flint
as a spatula. Next gone were leaves–
the sweet ones– but the branches chewed
like celery so were spat out. Feet swollen,
hands rugburn red, she climbed all
night, eating, the tree only sour leaves
& skeleton, exposed heart beating
before a death between teeth, strawberry ice
cream gushing past the mauve, ravenous moon.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Summer 2021)
at Tessaro’s after a long sunless
January mumblecore weekend
beginning no one to vent to
Pittsburgh bars of cig smoke
without windows I can barely
come up for air in the work
in which we say it all works
out in the end despite wanting
a cigarette having given it
up years ago just to again
(originally published in Nauseated Drive, Winter 2022)
sometimes at night
I bless my own heart
like I have authority
to give the balloon
floats away it is
hallucinatory thus
I greet a little tiger
toiling in the jungle
of the cupboards
oh what a pantry
we could have if we
could hold a job
in which we held
each other close
tying the knot
with teeth
in a stalk
of grass or
the celery
we snap
its little
green
heart
(originally published in Chronogram, Spring 2023)
songwriter your soft guitar
strums music in my mind your mother
cares for horses your father screams
glory be into microphone a devil
we sing dove redfeathered
circling failing past the wall
your rose note treble clef strings
along song in a quiet bar
we listen to a diorama
of the modern age earthquake
keeps us apart this rocky
word birdy bones
I have a bad skeleton
bite into my heart
to break my teeth
(originally published in BlazeVOX Journal, Spring 2023)
Ohio temperature drops forty in
the span of a day and suddenly all
returns to a slow slog. Open
the window when waking up
to reveal the sky spat snow
but when I leave the house
for work sun’s out and wind
sings a chorus of cold. I don’t
know what to make of it anymore.
I left this state I’d-rather-not-
count-the-years-ago because of this
uncertainty planted in the dead
cement of winter’s sputtering
to life and again the interstate
is in view. Give me a reason
to again. Everything around me, how
the days don’t seem to pass anymore,
a shuffling of cards. I sit
waiting for the old dealer to
hand me a full house in the
amber glow of spring.
(originally published in Fine Lines, Winter 2022)
When I think about it, I already lost my train
of thought. What a metaphor! With the desert smoke
into the sunset, et cetera. I think my pockets
would have been lined with gold in the olden days
then I’d grow gray. What gives
me the right – the right – the right
to become my own oppressor?
(originally published in Writer’s Block Magazine, Summer 2023)