this country music’s gunshots slinging through the wind wrapped around Anytown, USA
where I’ve never been anywhere outside my own mind traveled everywhere within this bag of
skin and blood bound to family I become further and further away from each day I bleed out my
own legacy owned by money by the river by the body bags I see everywhere I see a witness
(originally published in Moss Trill, Winter 2022)
If able to shield the cat who lives
with me from loud and unexpected noises,
I will press him to my chest and carry him
over to the staircase before pushing
down the coffee grinder, cup my hands
to his ears once the vacuum starts
running (though a gentle act of palms
on his party-hat ears is already enough
to make him sprint in the opposite direction).
Kingsford has grown used to gunshots on
television, but I can do nothing for the
barrage of fireworks leading up to
America’s Independence
Day, nor conspiracy theories
which run rampant in the sky
(because what better a home
for fake facts than fireworks–
impossibly deafening bursts of light
in the night). Recently, I have been
joking that I can talk to him one-
on-one in a shared animal language,
and he looks to the wall to relay
the story of some spider who skulked
across chipped paint in the morning
hours, above where I slept,
deep in a dream louder
than any external noise–
enough to quell the sort
of revelation that makes
me believe our futures
are fucked. I wake up
refreshed enough to wait
for the day’s new din
of whatever war’s
beating on our screens
and walls and
my heavying heart.
(originally published in Subnivean, Winter 2021)
it’s OVER
whelming
darkness
the creeping red
into the garden. the blossom
I align with the ocean
in its magnitude of idealism
I align with my self-
deprecating friends
my honest to
whatever god makes
them actually brings
them happiness I want
to live a little less
for my own interests
if I can help
you bring yourself
to light instead I
think you can call
the results
a little more
often, the god
of who we want
to be, the presidents
we are
(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2022)
At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me
2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.
At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone
who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You
cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard
cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy
against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite
side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.
And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?
Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.
(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)
The host stares blank pages at us,
mumbles in the vicinity of lobsters
in that overcrowded blue tank.
The waitress sings the menu,
points to CrabFest (overtures /
variations) – we are here,
always, for Cheddar Bay Biscuits,
the perpetual stream birthed in wire
baskets that make our intestines scream
minutes after paying
the check.
It is July 6th and fireworks explode
over trees
and, of course, we think them gunshots
because we are in a public parking lot,
our bodies full of grease that could drop
any minute in this America,
two-thousand nineteen.
(originally published in Toasted Cheese, Fall 2020)
july 4th horses
means I’m drunk
again riding
the whirlwind
of my American
personality
I wave the
flag of surrender
every day
but here I
see stars
in the blur
of the city
parade
(originally published in Hamline Lit Link, Summer 2020)
I expect mountains! Unrealistically
my brain brims with possible
outcomes: you’re late for work
again in Aurora, Ohio, the passing
green whooshing around you–
all I fear is accident, the casual
mistake, the narrow passage
of time I waste still looking
in west’s general direction,
like I could cause a change
in the wind if I willed it, if
I asked God for a second
helping of mashed potatoes
at my mother’s lonely house
that sits in a dark gallery
at the edge of my– our–
relentless American street.
(originally published in monologging, 2022)
I need this walk through the suburbs
summer heat has me a certain way
lovers have me a certain way
I need to clear my head with the zen
of weedwackers droning, an SUV’s blur and
whoosh, lawnmowers torturing the grass–
white noise, white birds, white hybrids.
walked with white sneakers in the mud
last night drunk in the rain through an alley
(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)
a fog this white mess of morning driving out of Ohio
trees dressed for a funeral per the new norm
dilapidated barns redbrown in the green
grass corpsebrown snow an oil stain birds
couldn’t afford flights home this time their muddywater
wings a gunk on the canvas of sky
the countryside is tainted
Abbey Road scores this thread of potholes
we pass a sign Muskingum County initially read as
musking gun
how bulletsmoke
rises from pores of the greendead ground
until all we know is the death encompassing
fog clears at noon
birds ravage a halfdeer
carcass
(originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Summer 2019)
in a moscow hotel room
shadow brokers partied
with stolen american
cyberweapons over the
counterintelligence
they wanted public
the americans
drank everything
and partied through
the night
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Summer 2018)