The Doubt That Follows Improv Class

Projection meaning screen is blurry.
I don’t want any part of.

Correct. I ended improv
class inspecting
my anxious habits–

has it been too long?
my demons asked.

                            I could not
answer honestly. Walked
away and waved
to the prospective
attention of no one.

Still, when clouds
are classically beautiful
I recall the simple mistakes.

No one counts
their turns, no one
passes their
inhibitions.

I scan the sky
for a piece of absolution.

Such indelicate pertinence,
this honest-to-however-many-
times I treat myself
like a stray without looking
away.

(originally published in Yellow Mama Magazine, Fall 2024)

Shoppers

At Westside Pavilion, I watch shoppers
walk slowly to their Jubilees, carrying plastic

bags of silk and thread to the thrum of Monday.
I shop enough inside my hungry flesh, living

in my Ford, booking tiny television gigs to
replace my shoes. Sometimes, I am able to

watch myself in the lens of a softer society–
playing voyeur to my temporary belonging.

(originally published in Communicators League, Fall 2021)

In a State of Sin

Randomness is my passion and if only
you knew the extent of it, the dice
I play in my mind with pseudorandom
number generators to determine what
I’ll even eat sometimes. John Von
Neumann said, Anyone who considers
arithmetical methods of producing
random digits is in a state of sin– what
buzz I get wherever numbers fall, on
my tongue, on my landscape, in
the neurons that tickle my hypothalamus
and its many toxins, drugs, memories…
though don’t read The Dice Man, its
misogynistic determination… a PRNG
chose it for me, I have a booklist, but if I had
a talent for acting I’d have an algorithm
choose what emotion I should play next.
As an amateur how can I mope instantly
when the machine tells me effervescence?
Most of my life, undetermined. Now
to shape my own destiny, one to burrow
me in with beavers and slugs while
I wait for a digit of reemergence.

(originally published in Obsessed with Pipework, Fall 2023)

Cedarville

Cycling in you stayed to ignite
electricity dark neighborhood wind zapped
on in your humid house the memory
is orange on the porch by the grandpa
scarecrow who greets all genial hearts
that bump and bleat without intention
tiredly you say we never should
have seen their home we could not
convince the world to move us

(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Autumn 2023)