In your dream I fuck
your sister; in the morning
you say I don’t love you.
Because we showed
a broken mirror to the world
and hate the jagged edges
of the trees. The barren
branches.
Sun-sharp bottle shards
glistening atop one bridge
in a city of a hundred bridges.
(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2020)
Our photos hang
on nails. Crucifixion.
Quiet, now, white
walls. I know
our distance
vast (Arizona’s
lizard days,
stretched).
The sand
in my eyes.
The wind.
Violent blindness–
everyone
cannot see past
this zoo.
Kill all
the animals before
God does.
I live to
love and you love
my diatribes.
Asinine
commitment, an
x-ray into
robbery. My
body. Your
house.
(originally published in Statement Magazine, Spring 2023)
Place the ring around your finger.
Let it spin. Pretend, for once,
that something can attain
perpetual motion. You drive back-
country roads to leave a life behind
yet miss the destined exit. Consider
the spin of the Earth, the galaxy,
the universe. At what point does
longing end? There are always
voids to fill, vast pits of fruit
you would savor if you could
stay still enough to love
a person.
(originally published in Cabildo Quarterly, Fall 2017)
I have convinced myself
all birds fly as soon as they see sky
I know each wing on each one
is different
Grounded I tend to speak aluminum
from the grand piano of my throat
It is a sunny thirty
The sun beams over a painting
of a palm supporting an oak
Believe me I want my tongue
to bloom good petals
I cannot get enough of being
alone
Imagine a single light
at the far end of a cave
so faint you must remember
you’re awake
Blow the dust
from the ivories
Play flat notes detuned
through my lips
I want the truth
yet spit loose gravel
into the chasm
of my lover’s ear
(Originally published in Poetry Super Highway, Summer 2017)
