Oblivious to the approaching hard-
ships of the road, the sleeping leaves
with years of nourishment wake
with you in your mom’s backyard,
under dark sky and pine boughs.
Those autumn days the wind blew,
singing, but remembering the song
has become too loud. Place your palm
against the bark to soften its voice, cease
the rustling. Come inside now. Walk
through your memories like in a dream.
(originally published in EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2023)
Get out of my life with
your election signs. Don’t
tell me what stakes
you stuck in your front lawn.
Come on. I know you’re not
a boomer. You say we’re at
a crossroads and I gaze
into the neighbor’s yard–
used to be bushes concealing
every outside path. Now there’s
someone on a lawnmower severing
the bonds of grass, in intervals,
each direction I look, each time
I visit home. And we comment
each new motor makes it harder
to reach each other. Mom’s
neighbors want to beat the rain.
We just built this fire in the back
of my childhood home. These
bundles of sticks my mom gathers,
waiting for us to come home
some early October Saturday.
At my brother’s first mention
of herd immunity, my sister
suggests we seek more kindling
in the tall grass. The air is
parched but we must keep
burning. Firewood left from Dad’s
death we’ve already forgotten.
My brother says we’re gonna
lose all this country fought for–
Dad survived World War II
only to shatter his ribs on a fire
hydrant sixty years later. Mom
would not let the coroner dig
into his carcass for an autopsy.
In his later years, Dad would keep
a hose beside our bonfires. Still,
we hunch over heat together,
burning hot dogs on forgotten
skewers. We dredge the past
again: a year after my father’s death,
cooking hot dogs over walnut husks,
one of you said there could be
an industry for the timbered taste
coating the tenuous meat we’ve
shared over the years.
(originally published in Alternate Route, Spring 2023)
I am reading old journals, putting
pieces of my past in place–
a series of staircase Tetris shapes,
a broken board mixing L.A. palm
fronds with bad haircuts Dad
gave me, but we needed to save
money, and I was bratty. I wanted
video game anime hair but got slanted
bangs laughed at by classmates and
teachers (who would never admit they
found it funny). I knew, and still do.
Sharp laughter edged in memory. I
want to say I’ve gotten over it. Over
all of it. But I still hold the smoky
gray of Nintendo controller in both
hands, and I am trying to move the pieces
where they need to go– but I am
older and life is faster, blocks falling
into places I can no longer find them,
stacking dark spaces to the top of my
screen after these earlier, easier years.
(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)
As a kid, when my friends came
over, we would become stalagmites
on brown basement carpet, Nintendo
controllers in hand. Screen’s cold
glow our lamp in the cave. My dad,
one morning, stomped down
the stairs and yelled to play
outside. We sprinted into daylight
and blackened our palms
with a depressurized basketball.
We made the net’s swoosh sounds
with our mouths, shooting the ball
into a nearby branch, since the hoop
was erected not on pavement but
in the backyard. A dirty game of
grass and dirt. Later I learned
my Uncle Zane passed away that
morning, My father must have
felt so temporary and small,
and I wonder how long he was
in the kitchen, seething about
our wasted time.
When he ordered us to go upstairs
and outside, he was doing
the best he could to keep
us from being underground.
(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Winter 2022)
If I tried to count how many nights I’ve wandered
alone to find myself, it would be on more fingers
than all my family has. If I were worried
only about eyes on walks stalking me–
if I hadn’t watched The Lion
King at seven, and my father hadn’t died,
and my brother– I wouldn’t be present
in this field of wild cleavers with my Mufasas
whispering weeds in the moonlight. Always
that breeze tickling the hairs across
my skin. That’s why I don’t walk
barefoot in the grass– I don’t trust strangers’
hands, so I count tendrils on everything green
in the dark that’s growing, wondering
if you remember how long it took
for me to learn to tie my shoes. The laces
multiplied in my field of math
I fumbled over. My hands, I could
never be precise enough to be
a mechanic, or a surgeon.
We were in the basement and
oh, you were so patient,
television glowing and muted. Dark
news and wave band static. These
negative film reels roll to nights
embedded in memory when I try
to sleep, when my lids are full
of images. I can’t believe I’ve stared
at the surface of the moon so many nights
over the years and just now saw
there is your face. My face.
(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Spring 2021)
The cafeteria was too
massive yet still the size
confined. Don’t want to talk lunch
meat. Or Drew at the table, harping.
He is inconsequential so why do I
mention him, twenty-some years
after? The bullies are the ones
who stay. I got smacked in the head
by a basketball there. The only fair
fight’s a food fight. Today, he’s
famous. He doesn’t know I have
this story to tell. I
drifted in and out of consciousness
for a week after. I floated
in the river, involuntarily.
That version of me drowned.
I never saw him again.
(originally published in The Scop Magazine, 2023)
My father despised even the word
Satan. Believed our house cursed
if ever I were to bring a Ouija board
home. And he preached the dangers
of using the word fool– an insult,
he said, from the mouth of Lucifer.
As a family, we went to the theater
to watch Titanic, but didn’t stay to
see the ship sink. We left soon after
previews due to the devil’s language.
What set him off was a god damn.
We weren’t even allowed deviled
eggs. I never ate one until I made
a batch in my twenties with an ex, but
the mess was too mustardy. Dirty
dishes on the counters of a cramped
kitchen. Today– this slushy Christmas
Eve– a friend drops a fresh batch
of demons on our porch, and I hold
the first egg in my hand, a chalice
almost holy, the swirl a flourish,
a handheld soft-serve mountain
top. I devour the lot– all six gifts–
without fearing the sin of gluttony.
(originally published in SPANK the CARP, Winter 2023)
red morning
light drapes the fog of
stage left everyone
left up up down down left
right left right B A START
1994
white socks blackened
jungleworld
the base the base
swamp playgrounds woodchips
bruises kneescrapes
black eye blank
avoid contact
years until a second player
amazing to be unlimited
one can falsely attribute
an escape
helicopter
or i could’ve gone
upstairs
(originally published in I Want You to See This Before You Leave, Summer 2020)
My olfactory nerve already overflooded with Acqua di Gio
on business cards beneath fluorescents, I did not expect
to run into my first love in the wilderness of Black Friday,
where hard rain was people. I sought a higher ground– escalator
to the bathroom to text my crush on my TracFone, until the arms
on my watch contorted a certain way. But my tarot cards flipped
when I recognized Kristen from afar, both of us unsure,
unlike in fifth grade, on the bus to Mohican, she slept
beside me, her hair fire on my shoulder, strobe lights of a confused
adolescence that entire week. Camp ended when everyone
contracted poison ivy. How to scratch the mind until snapping
back into self– in that present, years later, I thought she might be
fate and, thus, planned a coffee date, but because I did not
carve the path I wanted to take, winter came. And went.
(originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)
i carry infection in saliva
like a point of pride
see, my city reeks of bone
tall skeleton skyscrapers
i’m numb again
as dental drill enters me
year after year
what birthed my decays?
raised to desire new
wants every day
wanting even wanting
my dad worked at a ford factory
after the great depression
churned out a new kid
every few years
seasons of rust
spreading on steel
here’s the sunset
he’d wake us to say &
spend the days molding
the yard
rough hands on saw
that was satisfactory
to him
for me oaks are cold towers &
grass not godmade
took a clump in my mouth
from the graveyard as a child &
i swear i tasted
death
but could not digest it
i’m but a skeleton
all life’s experiences
slip through me
masticating childhood
no pondering
the future with mom and dad
scooping fries at ponderosa &
we’d always go for seconds &
mint ice cream after
(originally published in Burningword Literary Journal, Fall 2018)