television
the mechanism
wherein brains
dwindle
upon a string
tethered
to satellite
voices
in my ears
and yours
a stranger
intimately
confined
to believe
one of us
is real
(originally published in DASH Literary Journal, Spring 2020)
al
Library Days
That gray summer was spent buried
in fantasy novels beside my father’s grave.
It was rain in bitter heat, a whirlwind of pages
as my hands returned to oak, night lamp aglow.
Always I end in a nestle of branches and words,
longing to strip my faded jeans and unbathe,
ride a dragon into goldenrod, triangular
wings swallowing the neutral sky–
so often I shovel terrain in my mouth,
wishing time erode the sediment
that builds cities in my body,
skyscrapers in my throat.
(originally published in The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Winter 2017)
Al Jarreau
In Spain I did love and adore you. I did.
But in Spain, it is easy to love and adore anything–
the paella, her rabbit flesh and beans;
even the sidewalk– acera.
With her language an aphrodisiac,
you do not wonder why you fall, or sustain, in love.
We spoke our ugly language around beautiful tongues
which filled the air with matrimonial vows.
In the beginning, we were the sound of stars, the language
of kisses. I can fall in love with anything skybound
and I do.
Those moon-colored nights were our yesterdays,
and tomorrow we return to our familiar,
where love is not wordless
nor as easily presumed.
(originally published in Memoryhouse, Spring 2016)