I didn’t
give you
the flu
but everyone
around me
has it:
roommates
my partner
my mother
my partner’s mother
and the nurse
practitioner
gave me
the vaccine
pricked my arm
with a needle
and forgot
about it
let me out
into the world
with a tinge
of pain
and swelling
fever
to battle
the world’s
sickness
(originally published in North Dakota Quarterly, Summer 2020)
on mornings of annoyances 20-degree cold
sneaks through windows between my teeth
ices milk with each spoonful of Cheerios
& lukewarm coffee you study flipping
quickly the notebook flicking several gales
then scrawl in red pen what I assume curses
so I respond with this handful of nothing words
recyclables inside non-recyclable plastic I know
if I communicated better you wouldn’t be
ripping out perforated pages wanting to move
on but the cat watches winter leaves whisk
by the window & tonight it will snow
(originally published in The Seventh Quarry, Summer 2023)
the Thursday morning storm in bed
with you while the cat sleeps perched
on his scratching-tree the room’s hot
the fan whirs and we’re draped in my
favorite childhood blanket seventies
pattern orange and brown lines like
heart monitor displays the green-
painted walls and faux-Japanese
writing on the wallpaper border
half-open drawers with clothes
hanging out gum and drool
a makeshift sheet we call the
blinds hanging behind us
gray clouds behind that
the roar of the garbage
truck workers handle
our last week in rain
(originally published in The Nervous Breakdown, Summer 2020)
the winged violin soaring through air
all petal & leaf & major key this song
will fit somewhere why not with us
swallow it will fill the body your heart
the pulsating bass in our bedroom
jockeying deep cuts our eardrums
rhythmically rimmed as in whispering
to the other falling asleep is how good
your resounding warmth
(originally published in Cavalcade of Stars, Summer 2020)
after ingesting
four-leaf lover
after four leaf-lover
we look for luck we luck
into each other in a club of too
much speaking our sentences
our familiar mouths
builds a whirlpool
on the dancefloor
until dizzy and
green a reason seeking
other clovers in green fields
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Spring 2021)
You’re going to have it all
but not today, Taurus.
The swarming suits
will suffocate you;
love won’t feel like it exists.
This trend will grind you
down to bones but you
will bounce out of bed
tomorrow to grind
at work. Open your mouth
a little more than usual
to let more air
into your life.
(originally published in The Brasilia Review, Spring 2020)
We march through the airport in cold winds chanting
aluminum fists in the air and when we come home
the Fireball bottle is empty. The chimney is covered
in dust and Johnny has pneumonia for the second time
this year, lungs filled with water but no one else
breathes easily, just tuning into television fills a room
with coughs and silence. We had wings for a minute
but the planes have resumed their spots in the air far
away from the things that hurt. Just gazing down on
wide landscapes of gray plains and small churches
crumbling from the steeples.
(originally published in The Courtship of Winds, Summer 2019)
Last summer, clunks of glass,
grapefruit juice across the veiled
table. We stayed drunk
through sweltering June, to cool
off with Bella Sera pinot grigio,
Tostitos, queso. How much is
too much pleasure? These half-
empty days of water we are
not eager to drink. Sit in shade
til sundown, table umbrella up
to block the cancer sun we
know. We know.
(originally published in Kissing Dynamite, Spring 2018)
you told me Friendship is a road
split by two roads, parallel to Liberty,
and I told you that was a poem,
but you said, no, I’m just giving you
direction, and I looked up from your eyes
to the green sign reading Friendship Ave
and knew what you meant. Friendship–
we had yet to spend our first night
in the city, one that would end in
a dark cocktail bar for a dance party
that never materialized. In the morning,
we rode rented bicycles with bent
spokes and a click in their spinning
and I could only follow your lead
and cycle through streets still unfamiliar
to me– we weaved through lonely roads
to the Strip District, then stopped
at the Sixth Street Bridge to admire
the glimmer of the river that warm
winter day and continued until
we found the hill to Randyland
too steep to ride so, off our bikes,
we walked side-by-side up the path
until reaching our destination;
we locked our broken bikes
and kept walking.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2019)
& the Louis Armstrong vinyl gravels What a Wonderful World
while my lover & I sing along in frogvoice & my roommate bakes
pecans in yellow pajamas & dances the Charleston once the track
changes & the mutt watches her & the black cat peers out above
a cardboard box’s walls like she’s protecting herself from death &
how little she knew about how close we all were & still are & what
we can do to further protect ourselves coat our shells in olive oil
salt sugar and rosemary / how the shell of the year could have tasted
like fatty nuts resembling healthy & how this is the last day we can bite
fully into the year & the record spins another new track & how innocent
each seems in the vinyl’s foggy trumpets & nostalgic drums spinning slowly
out our ears into the silence that overtakes the world
(originally published in Jenny, Fall 2018)