I wore a gray-black striped shirt. You made
me a cookie dough ice cream cake. We drank
Rebel IPAs that ended with a stabbing pain
in your stomach. You asked, are you mad I can’t
sleep with you? We drew a storm with cigarettes,
exchanged darkened clouds in our back alley.
And yes, we smelted iron before we slept,
and through this photo, I remember.
(originally published in Setu, Fall 2024)
Birthday
Wildwood
Let’s go to Wildwood and get lost in
the rough waves of September. Stand
further from shore than ever, where
water’s shallow, sand firm though
fine enough to spiral into thoughts
where its strength dissipates and you
sink into a rough wave. Sometimes
what you need is to be pummeled by
the Atlantic. If you are not careful,
you could drown, but in the cerulean
calm of caesura, waves break all
around and forgive you. When
it is offered you want the air frigid
in the warmth of your sequence
of days so it can thrash the
fragileness of body and you will
not know what you have craned
your neck for. You’ll pull out
binoculars to view onlookers
on a distant, speeding sailboat
and you will see your life,
how fast it will pass.
(originally published in Stink Eye Magazine, Fall 2022)
You Celebrate Your Birthday While I Have a Religious Experience
Learning how to swim–
can’t say I haven’t
counted hours stars
float in the night infinite
darkness I cannot claim
sanctity within us. You point
to Orion like a familiar
neighbor like I would point
to a passing thought or ripple
believing it significant
as the moment passes.
(originally published in Artvilla, Spring 2023)
Cookie Cake
I cut cookie cake with plastic butterknife
a birthday my age is showing not my celebration
in the office a long way to the center I repeatedly
say I slice some New York pizza I shape
a biscotti I am the awkward focal point
struggling through the cake rock my boss
offers me a Swiss army knife I refuse
she swears it’s clean the PEOPLE want
a show they want to see struggle I
bellow hands shaking through thick paper
plate after plate she says I’m impressed
you didn’t break and my piece is
so sweet I can barely eat I
do it anyway the work
I put in deserves dessert
(originally published in Squawk Back, Fall 2022)
A Morning in Knox, PA – September 2020
can’t risk having you fall in
it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
and lavender cornfields
you would tell me if (I made your) birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close bullfrog leaping into moss
to escape me I get it I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
moths displaced little insects winging away
each further step I take toward the lake
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)
Hog
there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic
*
once on a drive home from Central Catholic
I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
than at thirty-two anyway the kid
at the window said they couldn’t
but I insisted and the manager
smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
bag of my trunk to this day
*
pig meat
pig meat
in a sleeping bag of green
*
there is no way to eat a dog
there are ways to eat a hot dog
I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
I’ve opened plastic package
set skillet to flame
lain logs on drizzled oil
*
the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.
*
Went to a dollar dog minor
league game twenty cents per dog flies
buzzing in orbit of condiments
five the limit at the window so all
could see I had the buns. One each for
STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
AMBITION.
*
One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
city full of my father’s love
of baseball and barbecues. Now
there was an undisputed grill master.
Everyone knows one. I am not one.
There is no way to cook.
There is a way.
Wayne was over and we flicked
lit matches with our middle fingers
from thumbs into ready
charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.
*
My whole life I have been walking
away, not turning back to look.
(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)
Starbucks
you stepped in dog
poop on your birthday
but still had a good birthday
we walked through windchimes
off golden sidewalks
& drank a vat of black coffee
free from a corporation
so desperate for your loyalty
all our other friends
reached into their pockets
to blow out their rewards, too
(originally published in The Daily Drunk, Winter 2021)
I Try to Keep Your Ice Cream Cake Cold
It is eighty-two degrees in Pittsburgh and my trunk
is crammed so your DQ cake sits in the passenger seat,
moves the same speed I do in my car in this orbit
in this galaxy. There is so much matter to keep cool
in the universe, but there’s sunshine through my wind-
shield and you– I know– thaw as a passenger beside
me. I’m doing what I can: aiming all the frigid vents
that way, holding a folder to shade you. I drive fifty-
five in a thirty-five to avoid my mind entertaining a
milky flood mixed with dust, dog hair, cookie crumbs,
and lust pooling where you are, your name in icing
illegible– it’s fine, for now. Don’t freak out. I am
floating over a bridge, the sun forever taunting,
and soon I know you’ll go, in one way or another,
into the mouth of a thankful person– whether me,
trying to save you from this heat, or you, radiant
as the sun, seeing celestial bodies who– for at
least this rotation– you know revolve around you.
(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Spring 2020)
Shut the Freezer Door
I am frozen in a block of ice
stuck in the absolute zero
of time how it’s rushing
water slowed down into
frozen eternity I mean it’s
my birthday today yesterday
& tomorrow being young
within universe expansion
transient in desire to shift
across continents & eras
what I want is to be known
past murky ice the good parts
melted out into a messy bowl
(originally published in Visceral Uterus, Spring 2018)
Weekends
You said it was your best birthday weekend ever.
You sang on stage in a large bar surrounded by friends.
When we turned our bodies into rhythm, pulsations,
and streamlines, the physical elements of snow and rain–
of kisses outside in blowing wind, and people honking,
winnowing by, I wondered about unicycle riders, the way
they wheel tall along sidewalks, straight-thin razor
cutting sound– their legs in cycled motions suggesting
let’s drag this out until we can’t
(originally published in Home Planet News Online, 2017)