In those wild woods, poison sumac
would distance one from active tracks–
jagged moan, trembling steel, cerulean sky
waiting for your call: an endless horizon,
a warbler singing quietly
into night.
(originally published in Every Writer, Spring 2017)
(originally published Spring 2017 in Belletrist, with a reprint in Wizards in Space)
The warehouse art gallery could never be mistaken for the beach,
even as curators charade sand across the dancefloor,
make us remember desire. Violins strike the throbbing air
with an electronic pulse, a horsehoof beat activating
the summer IPAs we drank beforehand to create
our summer selves. It ends. You end. At home later on
we watch documentaries where owls hunt forests for prey.
I pray we will soar but never hungry above branches.
Mostly I pray for our hearts to not be plucked raw, how stranded
and helpless we can feel in a new town while the world whirls
a thousand miles per hour– we stumble through sliding landscapes–
sand on concrete wails for sun, for sunset wind to whip
through industrial, unfinished interiors. We dance, or run,
until light draws herself from the ocean’s muted stone.
(originally published in Crack the Spine, Winter 2016)
Sometimes I say what I don’t mean.
There is an algorithm which can make me forget;
the others remind me to remember.
Your action has been undone. As if my actions
needed a separate undoing– I did not expect you,
with your raven hair, to perch our thousand
miles, thousand days to bottle time
and cast to sea, a folded note to be read
by a stranger at shore. Here, I am a knot
bound to be undone, tethered to a battered shoe,
and in the sprint, wind coarsens your hair.
In the cold we move closer and closer until the breathing
is stale and fogs my car’s windows, the outside world
turned gray. Confusing a fluorescent lightbulb for the moon,
I would risk one more rejection to bring you even nearer,
past the point of no return.
(Originally published in Corium Magazine, Spring 2016)
The turkey was sacrificial. We dug
our fingers through dark meat
to retrieve the stuffing but avoided
the controversial topics, the fat on our bones.
What bubbled was the broth, salt
on stone, and Mom drank sparkling
juice cocktails, pretended it was wine–
laughter compressed from the mash
in our mouths, the soft chew and gravy.
How simple it would be to spill grease
from the pan over the tablecloth, so temporary–
ten years ago was the last we all celebrated,
the last our talking bounced from mouths,
caught softly in our ears. After the funeral
we peeled grapefruit. Its rotting meat
blessed a white plate for days after the feast,
when we gorged enough of ourselves
to ask what it is about the lumps in apple pie
we savor, when the tartness
burrows new holes in our teeth–
maybe it’s the cutting, dulled knife on pie,
and the serving– one piece on porcelain,
a fragment, a memory
of what it means to be whole.
(originally published in Jazz Cigarette, Fall 2016)
I always knew my father was allergic to bees
but it wasn’t until his obituary
I learned he was once a beekeeper.
In those days, I hear, he prayed
to his veil– only to re-emerge, hours later,
having danced with God
under every umber swarm.
He was a gifted storyteller
but it wasn’t until his stroke
at seventy-four made me listen,
when his mouth betrayed his brain.
In his final years he would repeat,
the end of bees is the end of man.
So, heaven in the soft petals
scattered in the grass.
Young violets lined his coffin.
All I wanted was to listen
to stories he told before,
details I had forgotten.
Around the cemetery,
bees still glissando
through gardens not unlike the ones
he dug into his blackened fingernails–
honey and sweat, story-
pollinated requiems, harmonies
heard in bountiful
fields of bloodroot.
(originally published in Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal – Spring 2016)
*Nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology
To run away would prove
the wild still within me,
taming that short fence with my claws
to catapult into the trees where birds
and squirrels and spiders sleep alone.
I look starward when you lure me
out among the sparrows. I am no monster
who lurks in twilight, but sometimes
exist memories I never made, when cool air
rushes into me through the window screen
like the moon commanding the tide–
I am not fully water but, like you, an animal embedded
with her feral past– my sisters teach me to hunt,
mice dangling from their mouths that haunt afternoon naps
on your heavy bed– my beautiful sisters never knowing
how it feels to be a princess, gold and pink
tiaras glistening between their royal ears.
I would not belong in those sprawling
forests from my dreams. The hunger
from the wild’s lack of you
would tremble my true heart home
under starlight’s navigation– to here,
where my whiskers graze your calves,
where I am cradled in your arms
in the company of heartbeat:
a sweetness, a tenderness
the feral could never dream of.
(Originally published in VAYAVYA, Spring 2016)
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)
Every road has a finite end, just mud and sky, daytime
if you’re lucky, night looming beyond the paling horizon.
Maybe there is a barren tree, branches dancing
to a slow sonata, a love song only the two of you
know, the earth calmly listening. If you can plant
your naked feet into the ground, you will hear
the earth hum as it spins faster than you will ever
move, and though it always seems like stasis, you hope
it never stops, remains a puzzle
merely a misstep from disarray.
(originally featured in Common Ground Review, Vol. XVII, Issue II)
the living room drones and mumbles.
the bone dove sings a petrified song
above the tree, nearly silent enough
to believe a resurrection could occur
in the coming days. pass the stocking
with the kidney stone. bring
the anesthetic. we will drink–
this is the blood bond, the calm,
the thin slicing of ham: bloodless
& calm, torn red wrapping paper
strewn about the room
(originally published in Whale Road Review, December 2015)