The word just past
your grasp is deaden,
as in: I can’t believe
I’ve been at this job
for five years now.
Still, I wish I had
the fortitude
to last forever
without ominousness–
no heat death if you stare
out into infinity. No
loved ones dying
their hair black
in old age.
(originally published in DREICH, Fall 2023)
When I think about it, I already lost my train
of thought. What a metaphor! With the desert smoke
into the sunset, et cetera. I think my pockets
would have been lined with gold in the olden days
then I’d grow gray. What gives
me the right – the right – the right
to become my own oppressor?
(originally published in Writer’s Block Magazine, Summer 2023)
For David and Anna
Rain is never insurmountable,
and the sun never gets old,
though we plan to, together,
to grow with green things
sprouting at our feet. We
watch new trees become
wise while the landscape
shifts, as it must, and though
Earth spins briskly– almost
beyond what we can fathom–
it has order, being as small
and in love as we are.
We stand on our plot
of land, firm though
flung through time and
space, the universe we
made forever expanding.
(originally published in The Vineyard, Winter 2023)
I only know you in the dark
of music colors the big gray
tavern alive with chatter as
much as us as much as alcohol
which could let us roam
out to a new trail a morning
hike where we would talk a
quiet place and let jays
be the playlist for once
(originally published in Kettle Blue Review, Fall 2018)
Sometimes a Saturday is candle wax
the length from Cleveland to Columbus, a highway
of years burning blue in early spring, a handful
of flowers you hand an old friend who seems
a little aged now: a new house, a long mortgage,
a luxury car and me, unemployed,
eating pizza and fries.
He drinks red wine (party
hard weekend) –
these blood-drinks of youth.
I buy him nothing
he gives me space in return.
(originally published in The Heartland Review, Fall 2018)
I need new faces
clothes drawers
opening
closing
I used to find
spacious greens
county lines
my hometown
I wandered
through the smells
of mom’s scrambled eggs
faucet running
disposal clogged
with garlic
understand
I want to be
a bullet train
memory
I’ll tell my future grandkids
stop moving
opposite
of me
(originally published in Neologism Poetry Journal, Summer 2017)
*Pushcart Prize Nomination
When the city stops buzzing, streetlights
invite reflections onto storefront windows.
Finally, the distortions make us young,
removing cigarette burns and ash.
What love is reserved for the old? The bridge
seems sturdy in winter but more slippery
with its blue-streaked ice– and mouths of
gravel seem ageless. Time rescinds her reach
toward the cradle of sleep–
maligned shoes end on a cold porch,
slathered in a salty grit. Snow on
the doormat waits for extinction.
(originally published in “the vacant hinge of a song“, courtesy of Origami Poems Project)
The daddy longlegs cantilevers from Styrofoam
to sidewalk. Beetles, red-handed, scurry from a brown banana peel,
and as my gloved hands rake the dregs of recent days to neatly seal
in a new black bag, I think of how much we lose
in a week, or in the span of a second, some wayward glance,
a hush in a waning tide … no moon, no sun, no, merely
the space between … wrinkles slink into our faces.
I would give you wings, but you have risen,
already, high into infertile sky. And in the morning,
without sunrise, I will swear
the wings were broken, were never there, or were crushed,
in some tiny state of insignificance.
(originally published in Syzygy Poetry Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2)