I deliberated when traveling the country
because there was no one anywhere waiting,
no one on either coast with arms open wide to hold
me in their jacket in an ocean breeze– no, grime
rocked from screen to shade. The tide of film
frothed over tours viewing Santa Monica
for the first time as if, as they had hoped,
there was something new to see.
(originally published in streetcake, Winter 2018)
How you ran
with eyes averted.
Kite and string, we
wanted the wind,
a laugh–
I hold and
wonder when
the breeze
will come.
(originally published in Up the River, Fall 2017)
As the tide heartbeats forth,
my lovers return in salt.
Silver-winged seagull loses herself
& dives.
Yesterday I thought
I would be in love forever–
today, whiskey on my tongue,
sand in my eyes.
I want to find every person
I ever loved within the waves,
how navy shuts
thin books of light.
The line between sand & tide
is awash with wings.
Salt burns my mouth
& I am drenched
in your foam, milking
the sea for words–
the sea swollen with stories
we never told,
words we
never said.
(originally published in Common Ground Review, Spring 2018)
As I move further from you, whiskey in hand,
the thirst seems to pile like distance in the miles–
my shape roasted under Pacific sun.
Our sunglasses clinked with wine glasses.
The dry sponge. Run me under the sink.
Or run with me. You could be a ghost, too,
a phantom unfurling before me, haunting
each town I pass. Every morning, I am gone.
For a while, your blanket was warm. But chill the air
long enough and someone will notice. No one
likes the cold. Everyone prefers the summer river,
her water’s blue in the ice of winter, the clear
of July. I dig for you in the dirt. Then myself.
My shapelessness. My tendency to drift
so far away that I never fully return.
(originally published in Jazz Cigarette, Autumn 2016)
For two weeks I bathed deep in the sweat of whiskey.
Submerged vocals yawed to 3am caresses together, together.
The silken bed turns itself over, its base an earthquake.
Listerine breath hurls to vortex the two years of refraining
from the holy riptide– how its arms reach
and withdraw, reach and withdraw.
You would drown in the salt of married shells,
sheathe your crackled forearm in the tide’s tattoo.
You would let it embrace and clear
your pearls. Thus begins the tide anew.
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review)
because I repeatedly disregard that which is shaped like a diamond
to be a diamond,
I will flirt with the skateboard girl
who zooms away
& lament our love, lost
as yesterday’s blackened ganja.
living on the beach,
scraping sand
for a seagull’s Dorito–
we are crevices in the Santa Monica boardwalk.
we slip out from ourselves
without knowing
yet know ourselves sunken
deep in the tar ocean
& yet, somewhere, still there
from many years of being the ones
who collect what others discard,
making space in our own diamond-shaped boxes
(originally published in Eunoia Review, February 2016)
