partying was the new
beginning growing up how birdlike
I rose from the ash of a suburb
to learn a new suburb how limiting
to be alive in a time of bubbles
floating in a happy blur
chemically unwell
days to pop
(originally published in Erothanatos, Spring 2020)
but I keep bingeing the same drinks.
Fireball, Tito’s, more and more–
I tap my feet, wait by the window
for the workweek to end to meet
unknowns at bars. I blackout blind
myself into the mistakes I always
make– my legs pressed against yours
in the Lyft, I want to say I don’t want
tonight to be a ghost that haunts us,
but I don’t move. I don’t say anything.
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
10:33 AM on July 4th
& if that ain’t some
gunslinging fortune
my drinks have teeth
can’t mix with coffee
I am trying to stay awake
I am trying to stay
a firework of politically conscious
colors
most mornings the soup of ritual
I gnaw at the aluminum’s tab
when my beer has ended
I am not satisfied
no
I am not satisfied
with this ending
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
I wish I could tell it better. As
this is a poem. Just
at my desk in rainy
January thinking about
the last night of last year,
when I did something that made me
examine my drinking. I know
I am supposed to talk about what.
So this must be frustrating, the
vagueness. It wasn’t a car crash,
necessarily. I didn’t kill
anyone but, perhaps, the old me,
now a zombie walking
out the dregs of the new
year and hovering
outside my door. He wants
to knock. My knowing his
wanting to knock is
his knocking. And if
I haven’t killed anyone
yet, maybe it should be him.
But I can’t bring myself
to do it. I stopped hard liquor.
And beer, for now. Forever,
maybe. Just saying it
is gunpowder on my tongue.
I can’t stop eating candy,
and I’m very thirsty. But
is selfishness refusing to call
Kaveh’s wolf a wolf? Like
pre-diabetic. What will
kill me is the refusal
to kill.
(originally published in Red Rover Magazine, Spring 2021)
It’s early and I
can’t fall back asleep– maybe, before work,
I can enjoy a beer or two.
[I deliver food]
Cut to: work
It’s slow.
Maybe I can sneak home
and have a can in the car.
The depth of craving
I scoff and deny.
What keeps me going is each lap’s checkered flag–
if you can get to February, you can drink. [my partner]
Cut to: February [sober]
I don’t think we should drink.
We can wait another month.
It’s Saturday night and I have drymouth
and the house crawls with
bottles, chasers, faucets, an empty
champagne bottle on display on a table.
Such is a trophy. Gold-adorned
bubbly. I can tell you the kind
of night it was that drank it:
ordinary.
I was how I was.
Who can I become?
(originally published in TreeHouse: An Exhibition of the Arts, Summer 2019)
I walk this familiar street
of spring. Cherry blossoms,
sunshine, the desire
to drink. Yesterday
I snuck into a field
with a flask to avoid
the knife room I
tell myself to stay
out of. My longing a black
rolled-up rug. I tell myself
Stay wound, trying how
I can before I let again
the drunk in me to walk
through the door,
spill me out in scuff
marks and mudprints
just after the rain.
(originally published in Penmen Review, Summer 2019)
Pacing around the bar crowd, watching
the Cavaliers transfer heat to one another through
bullet passes around invisible perimeters, Kurt
and I keep drinking the strangers toward us.
“Gaseous diffusion,” he offers. “Alcohol
is only molecules bumping into each other.”
Our bodies generate more heat with every swig,
the atmosphere tense but warm through
our gullets. We chug chaos in the blur,
invite a thousand basketballs to bounce up
and down halfcourt. The players don’t notice
our dribbled words in soundwaves processed
a million different ways in the space between
earlobe and brain. Endlessly the spectators
chant go to sleep because no one we want
to talk to wants to talk to us, our zigzagged steps
combining with the sound of a team on the verge
of climbing a challenging mountain though
the peak is steep so we try nothing more
but the drinks that keep us moving. To stop
would be to hear the room’s haunting cheer.
(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Fall 2018)
is what we call grapefruit juice club soda
and vodka. Also the name of a wolf and
cost-efficient bus. There is where you told
me stop drinking. But it gives me fangs,
these gnarly sharps I say I need, let me keep–
tires spin in the mud, my bedroom where I
drink alone. There’s a delay. Of course.
It’s 6 PM. It’s 4 AM. Half-crescent awake
drink through morning again. Stringshaped
street I’m twirling aloof. I know there’s
been some kind of mistake. This dim
lobby with icy hands. Who knows. The sun
might go away. Your call. You called my name
at the last stop– I wanted to be wheeled some-
where south of here warm all the time. Where
I can shave all my fur and sweep back up.
Lounge by the beach my tongue of drool hot
midwinter. Past the equator. Don’t you see
those yellow lines you’re swerving over…
underneath my shirt is another shirt I want
to remove. I’m running out of fumes. Soon
you will wait for me in the corner-forest
where it’s okay to talk to the passenger
next to you. I promise. You’ll talk
a head clean off and refuel.
(originally published in Thin Air Online, Summer 2018)
To curb today’s desire
to drink, I part the
lips of a childhood
friend– Tony the Tiger
on cardboard blue–
and rip the bag
to snow
a bowl of corn
and white.
Nintendo used
to be my fix,
controller gripped
through loud
and colorful
screens
until the light
of morning.
And when I
started drinking
I didn’t think
one day
I’d need
to stop.
I eat
bowl
after
bowl
until
I
pour
the
d
u
s
t
.
(originally published in Goat Farm Poetry Society – Edges Zine, Winter 2019)
It was easy
in college
for every profile pic
to be a drunk photo
smiling. Beer cans
in hands in a bar,
at the beach,
in a house, in
a car. We were
all young and
happy
thinking us
adults. Legally,
sure, yes.
We were.
But the me
in those photos
wasn’t thinking
about bills
the endless
stack of debt
I still cannot
afford.
Of which
I was
in those moments
accumulating.
Like snow clouds
beckoning
over Lake Erie
I hoped would
cancel class
so I could drink.
(originally published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Fall 2018)