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)
among the blue desks was a meager
audition for adulthood crumpled
into a mess of wooden shadows reciting
barbell lines on the film school second
floor (stair steps closer to Orion) how
I was dreaming young of the world’s
grand magnanimousness suffused
with balloons that smelled of palm frond
everglades my school-sanctioned camera
would record the nightglow trees by lights
of Coe Lake where it snowed pine cones
in the backyard of my mother’s house
where acres stretch forever rugs of green grass
and hunger the endless hunger for somewhere
anywhere else
(originally published in KGB Bar Lit Mag, Spring 2021)
that was the monochrome new year
I reached for your leg like a frog with long
tongue and you were on
the couch flyswatting everyone
the walls were drunk too the way
we behaved in the wild dorms
animals celebrating the turn of a page
the setting of the sun it was winter
in Berea and we held each other
like it would never be warm
again we caught snowflakes on
our tongues left black bottles in dead grass
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
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)
For when the time comes,
you said & so, behind an oak
in his backyard, we tangled
tongues to the tune of the
party’s constant screaming,
heart-red Solo cups
separate and scattered
(originally published in WINK, Winter 2020)
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)
Bleeding nose.
Crooked smile.
I will run you under water.
Your carved, concrete face.
Clothes you did not wear: tulip.
Leave your red suitcase on the floor.
The fanny pack, too.
Soft whistles: ghostly silk of burnt ember.
I am the only one you never needed.
Saliva on your bottom lip.
A hole.
A pillow.
We sat warm on elongated bus rides.
Followed barren trees along the highway to places we won’t.
(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Summer 2018)
Evenings in the video lab laughing at ourselves acting in
perpetual circles the clicks of play and rewind in a dialogue
with eternity rectangular how to zoom into self with microscope
both of us learning but look at you now in the fighter jet
sky tethered to wirings of small precise instruments of war how
we live in the perpetual unknowing state of I want you always
to come home even not to me because back then
every small moment was contained in its forever
(originally published in Street Light Press, Spring 2018)
& she celebrates among the drunken dead at the Horseshoe
how ball-missiles fly through air and land cradled in young idols’ arms
I remember this,
fear of missing out– no: just missing
fumbling
no want to pull winter hat over my ears
I drink spiked cider reminding me the summer river
no breathing fire into my palms into
the frigid heart of Columbus. No,
I am waiting for the pedestrians to pass my house. Mostly decked in red, some
in opposing green, almost like Christmas, but without–
family knows the apples I douse in vodka.
family knows my unwell.
family knows my eye toward the wind I find too cold
& blow against
been awhile since Kylie & I were breathing the same air
& I’ve got a kind of sixth sense for it
(I see dead people)
but not in a ghost way more like everyone I pass has ghosted
(the phantom passes in public)
& it’s true we both head home for the Christian holidays.
Xmas, xgiving.
Cars passing the same routes
to different destinations.
Desolate highway.
Kylie’s down the street & I’m drowning here
making a scene
her silhouette at the surface joyous
but occupied
(originally published in Qwerty, Spring 2018)
Write what
you know,
they say.
From graduating
college, I learned
how to survive
bars
then crashed
into Mom’s
garage drunk
with the GPA of
zero-point-oh-to-
be-young-again-
oh-Lord-oh-my-
oh-fuck
(originally published in SOFT CARTEL, 2018)