These Tinder dates and hookups.
Teeth kisses and unfamiliar homes.
You count cold days and they are circular.
There’s a blue hue from the window.
M snores in unison with the universe
of her bedroom. I can’t sleep, so
I become the fan. After some time,
transcendence is the blade that cuts
through stale air, makes the room breathe.
(originally published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Spring 2018)
From oneness: two, three, four.
Shadows through doorways.
Breath from water. Surface
bubbles, rippled sighs. The ocean
dried, became a city. Marine lights.
Pearl buildings. Skyscrapers so
old you can see the way the
world will end.
No one knows the space they occupy.
We fade in water. We fade
in air. We fade in living,
drown in life.
(originally published in Zany Zygote Review, Winter 2018)
The taco meat I seasoned
gets drier by the day. I add ghost
pepper though I do not do well
with high spice. I have no self-
control– four, five, six tacos
at a time– dry beef, cheddar,
heat– the ghost eventually
haunts, tongue in flames.
Last week I drank Long Islands
with a former lover and ended
in a park of hills at 2 A.M.
I lost my glasses in the grass,
but she called me baby one last
time. Everything was blurry, dark,
when I kissed her goodbye
in her apartment, slept in my bed
to the whir of the ceiling fan.
The next morning I called
my girlfriend, told her I loved her
but the words burnt my tongue.
(originally published in taxicab magazine, 2018)
Newton knew the force of a desire
determined the severity of impact.
If you want an apple, the thought will travel
far to haunt you. Calculus was invented
to make sense of your absence. Such
is the memory of July: Beach House
in dim lighting, your bed beside the stairwell.
One could almost roll over and…
walking up those stairs the first time,
you were not there, but searching for your
cat outside, later found hiding in the ravine.
You wouldn’t let me stay, not yet.
I would carry silence into
waning days of weeks then feast
on all the words you spoon-fed me.
I failed to boomerang magic into our
silent field, unlike our first date: cheap
chicken on the patio of World of Beers,
talking what it would take to unlock
our true selves. You called Colin
to buy molly, though I’d never
rolled. Like everything else,
that plan flaked and you never
thought of me again.
(originally published in Man in the Street Magazine, Winter 2018)
Some birds zigzag
below shrapnel clouds
and others, perched
on limbs, chatter
about migration
in this chill
because the leaves
in your yard
are a different shade
than your neighbor’s,
but each tree
casts its own
ballot into earth
and waits
for the season
to change.
Scrunching
all the dead
beneath your boots
along the way
to the church
with the cookies
and machines,
you pass big,
brick houses
with American flags
and jack-o-lanterns’
sunken smiles
on porch steps
and city workers
who have been
fixing power lines,
building structures,
patching roads
for so many months,
and so many months
to go.
(originally published in The Rising Phoenix Review, Fall 2017)
I awaken on a cold-coiled spring
day in which the car won’t stop
spitting fumes into mouths this steering
wheel won’t budge any way but forward
though we veer to the side past white center
line on highway under full moon to fill
our gas tanks with flowers found in eyes
fluttering in wind right when I say
I love you this time I mean it
(originally published in Epigraph Magazine, Winter 2018)
My roommate takes me
for a walk, or she takes the dog
for a walk. It doesn’t matter.
It’s the second night
we’ve walked each other,
or the dog walked us,
sore throat, brainy fog,
and this time can’t even find
the moon, obscured by houses.
We look anyway, together,
comparing bloom to doubt,
how one is sure, the other
grows, and leaves
crunch beneath as the dog
stops our walking
to pee, to leave another
thing behind. On Sunday
I watched the Niagara dump millions
of gallons into itself, mist rising
into something, nothing. The moon
loomed huge over the bridge
to America towing sunset’s lavender
bed but you can watch a thing die
before your eyes, or not at all–
the way, driving back from Canada
in heavy traffic, I tapped you
on the shoulder on the sky bridge
and said, look, here’s something,
one thing beautiful left, look,
and took the world’s last magnificent,
proffered blue and there, as a passenger,
you refused.
(originally published in The Knicknackery, 2018)
umami fish in dead cold
sticky rice clings to
gum. take another slab– tell
yourself you are the
ocean, that you will
chew through sea-
weed.
(originally published in Hobart, Winter 2018)
buffalo roam
the sacred land
pipes and protestors
clank and clash
signs
God in front of the lens
smiling gold teeth
cup of reservoir water
in hand (with straw)
I did this
he boasts
god
isn’t it beautiful
the way people rally
sinking ships
a river knows
only the land
it flows through
(originally published in Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Spring 2018)
Your wristwatch ticks slower than mine.
Time does not account for the beating
of two hearts
on opposite coasts.
Know we pass through days the same:
second by second, minute,
hour, moon– every second,
every minute I fill myself
with your moonlight,
and when your crystal radiates
at the thrust of night,
we are endless, meaningless
as the turn of the hour
when the gleam of your smile
will guide me from the dark.
(Originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2017)