yellow and dust let’s
transmit every moment
as constellations that
can only be seen once
no matter how long we
look captured only in
almanacs of our pasts
(originally published in CircleShow, Summer 2017)
2016
Polyamory
we walk parched lips from downtown
to the jazz & rib fest you tell me
you love too many at once
I count the number I love at the moment
but we lose track of headlights
following the other’s every move
neither of us know how to get there
how to make music & when we arrive
jazz is faint & we don’t listen to sporadic notes
choosing to walk the bridge over the river
under spotlights of webs of moths
between railings & you say insects
are the most important creatures alive
the more of something there is the better
all these millions of arachnids spinning
webs to eat the hearts of bugs they always catch
we stand away from the railing because we
don’t want spiders to creep onto us & start
the work of eating through skin to dig to heart
we don’t look at each other because
you can be in love with so many at once
but not the ones who want it most
(originally published in Edison Literary Review, Summer 2017)
On the Precipice of Long-Distance
The universe ends
or is supposed to. It lives
in your bed– mornings tangled
with laughter. In a week you will move
to Florida. A week ago we swayed
on swings away and toward each other.
A fling from disorder, we are no longer bound
to orbit. Still, I swat the air
in your fourth-floor apartment
overlooking the river to follow its movement
to determine when a body is real
and to what mouth it goes. For you,
it’s an airport. Until then, we hike
through forests building tree forts
to wooden-house our hearts.
At night, I search the stars for words
but can’t make sentences you tell me are there.
All I find is the slow motion of time,
then distance– since time’s beginning,
the universe took many small steps toward us
so let’s walk that way together.
If you lose me from great distance,
I will build a bridge so short
you’ll be right here from that far away.
(originally published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Summer 2017)
Comfest, 2016
The Suburban Wild
In darkness we find a train:
engine active, body inert.
We walk the adjacent rail’s
delineated steel, waiting for a sign.
A spotlight from the city’s purple heart
shoots starward into clear, and the train
barks at something we cannot hear.
We scamper through the brush,
our clothes and hair full of sticks–
strays rising into the cold shadow
of a home, on the hunt
for what will make us whole.
(originally published in The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Winter 2017)
Pool-Blue
We lounge by the pool
& sink before entering.
Its blue averts new colors.
It’s simple: I don’t know how to love
without drowning,
lungs flooding with chlorine.
I never want to dive into the deep
& forget how to breathe
but I followed & found to love
is to leave your fins on land–
but silent in the deep, lungs
rationing air, I want us never to open
our eyes underwater to find
the pool colorless– that we
will always see the blue
the water does not have.
(originally published in GNU Journal, Winter 2017)
Franklin Avenue in 2015
Two years ago, we would drink tall beers
hidden in black, plastic bags ’til we passed
from laughter, fluttered to fill
our glasses with more.
There would have been more pages
to turn, but none of us spoke our
human language anymore.
Now, a browned frond slumps
between parked cars.
Two teenagers flirt
underneath a palm. Whispered leaves
are fragile– each movement
a link to the next
until it is not.
Their laughs reverberate
when they, too, part. Uncork
those swan bottles–
let them go, graceful
into night.
(Originally published in The City Key, Spring 2016)
Skeletons of New Year’s Eve
I do not perceive you as obsessed with death
even if, days before, our jovial talks of dying
led to sugar-frosted blue wondering at the sky.
We planned to pop champagne for the birth
of feeling alive: winter hardens soil so we must dig
to the laughter we share in our spines.
We did not drink white wine, but the beer was breath
without knowing the scent– like any year,
we were paintings of light and dark, of limb
and bone so disordered to stand is a triumph,
and hope is a kaleidoscope, a conjecture.
Each dying wave returns, even at the frayed edge
of memory, how the dead are lavish with flowers
and stories. Still, we press on to uncork
our champagne future: drafts of breath in each
new year, dead waves haunting the mortal tide
with no specific beginning, no obvious end.
(originally published in Liquid Imagination, Summer 2016)