mess of red awash on
verdant streets your face
the mist eyes closed
a crease stained stagnant
now what stops me stops
you purple blue glimpse
a rainbow near your voice
a phone call never call
again give me the words
to say those words
(originally published in datura, Summer 2021)
Fortune: lines lead somewhere
hopeful, but a jumbled mess.
Our palms wrinkle quickly.
We’re at a loss to say.
The American Interstate
is visible from space.
City lights a horde
of blinking phones.
Severed cables hang
over every intersection.
Tires, wires, water bottles
amassed hill-high.
A crow watches from the top,
her head in and out of smog.
(originally published in Evening Street Review, Summer 2022)
Work snips years
it abducts me
from living
and the drinks are heavy
after
in my liver
my tenuous body
if I could live
in a less-consumed way
outside
with the grass
not overgrowing
my head
in the mountains
with a beach-blue
overlook
and while I’m
fantasizing
I want a bug force
field to keep
the pests away
I want to glide
over the landscape
a less-ambitious Magneto
breathing in
high-altitude sea breeze
until the stress is gone
and I deflate
into the ocean
though I don’t know
how to swim
see
even my daydreams
end with darkness
(originally published in The Wise Owl, Spring 2023)
in the wetlands black-
eyed orange daisies
live for light needing
no human hand to rustle
nearby leaves nor tinted
hair draping black dress
of lilies within weeds
and leaves you plucked
a direction: north
and walked bulldozed
path to void of trees
where the wind stocked
moral inventory to forgive
you inside its shelter
measuring the days with
yardsticks staring up
to sky from hard earth
needles on a marionette
(originally published in The Sock Drawer, Fall 2021)
My ancestors pull
my body out
of the mire.
There are no swamps
to float on.
I stand firm
in my place–
and walk
in straight lines.
The void
I try
to fill–
inside my bones
the steel framework
to support
my existence.
It’s the heart
that chooses
color,
a strong gust of wind
banging
wind chimes
wherever I go.
I pushed away
from the truth
when I was
still playing.
An innocent hand
in the sand.
I always
change the game
when I choose
the wrong
answer.
(originally published in TigerShark Magazine, 2023)
We rearranged the patio
though no one’s allowed
back. Silver chairs survived
the winter, now the virus.
The navy rug we slid on
brick, under long legs.
We hung string lights under
nostalgic blue, a horsefly
floating by. We put our porch
tables there in negative sun
when I said the new people
watching is through barbed
wire, through dead weeds
overlooking distant sidewalk
behind the abandoned printing
press and the parking lot
of Rite-Aid. There
I saw a congregation
shouting and prowling
abandoned concrete.
All I could picture
was ubiquitous spit–
how will the world
seem clean when
we are allowed
the world again?
Beaks of birds,
always lurking.
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Summer 2021)
Living in the golden-shadowed
window reflection through bam-
boo, such is the layered tone
of the rest of my day, nose
sore and red, I am urged
by friends to celebrate (this fall
day fifty and slow, so sunny).
Though my sentinel self rises
from the seat it sits in– mind
released from body, you have
fulfilled your duty– stay home.
(originally published in The Wise Owl, Winter 2023)
Vodkas ignite a serious conversation we sing cacophony
our mouths open machinery in the room whirs the gears
clank and then the whole dark bar lifts its legs and flies
no windows though
we perceive sudden shifts as turbulence impending
storms we move as far from as we can talk about
(originally published by Mad Swirl, Winter 2022)
we paid a judgment debt
now we drive red-on-blue
thunder on Akron soft-rock
in the void into the name-of-mine
where Katie and I
must make a mockery of ourselves
I must state I am not the opportunity
I need to define
you are the opportunity
and we pretend to avenge
our fallen love’s arches we are the same
down between dots that rusted golden medal
in an ocean of toothpaste of scraps of dirt shoes
of wings on our backs under legs covered in scars
of dark scuffed white on the wrong pavement
knowing no matter what I say
you are to tell me I love you
until we’ve laughed it out
(originally published in Mason Street, Winter 2022)
lost contact walking
in circles around franklin
village you wanted to be alone
at the festival of rockets
you paid for everything
we met at the coffeepot
concert steamer summers
spent in a young galaxy
where we both loved
desert guitars
the avenue droughts
and cold
basements
(originally published in Rabid Oak, Spring 2022)