Vodkas ignite a serious conversation we sing cacophony
our mouths open machinery in the room whirs the gears
clank and then the whole dark bar lifts its legs and flies
no windows though
we perceive sudden shifts as turbulence impending
storms we move as far from as we can talk about
(originally published by Mad Swirl, Winter 2022)
Because Tony once said he knew
Columbus and Los Angeles the way I do–
I have not yet developed a poetry of
place for Pittsburgh. Three years in and
still the surprise hills, the way I always
feel– still– an outsider wending my way
through confusing streets. I’ve worked with
Kailee’s dad longer than I lived with Paige
and still we haven’t had a deep conversation.
Everywhere I go there remains a sense of some
thing deep that needs explored. The way
I walked Los Angeles streets at night–
the endless sprawl– must be the same,
but Pittsburgh’s smaller, the graffiti
more familiar, how it’s all a sketch of home.
(originally published in Vilas Avenue, Winter 2023)
This fixture you forgot
on your back patio.
You say you are confused–
how did that turn on? It has
been months since I last visited.
I say the light is a metaphor
for our friendship. Big plants
sit in chairs in your brown-fenced
garden. Don’t know how close
to be anymore. Never get too close.
A tomato vine peeks from a planter
above you. Gardening’s a hobby,
inching toward the thirty you fear.
An August birthday during the lost
summer and you toss a squeaky
blue ball in my general direction,
more wildly as the night goes on,
and Lola retrieves it every time.
You say she slept upstairs with
you for the first time. We joke
she didn’t fall immediately, that you
had to tell her to turn the television
off, stamp her cigarette out. With our masks,
I only see your eyes smile. I hope you notice
mine. It is dark, as it has been for months,
and we try to stay illuminated, despite
these killer particles suspended
somewhere in the talk between us.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Summer 2023)
is meaningless. Half
my lines converge into
lies. Perhaps I love you.
Perhaps I’ll never know.
I am trying to become
a student of myself,
the stars, their pretend
constellations. What
I see up there are daggers,
their staggering glints
of infinity, how star-gazing
is tracing all the ways
I may have never met you.
(originally published in Hiram Poetry Review, Spring 2022)
on back porch with pounding
rain puddles amass you ask
advice an offer a hornet
nest in the gutter we invite
friends over my memory
short my throat closed to
organ tunes in harmony
answers inside aluminum
you hand me your phone
say look another malady
the dirt clogged drain
for pests to fester in
(originally published in Taj Mahal Review, Winter 2022)
up treacherous stairs at the end
of January to sit in the hidden
room at the back of the Tap
where we question west elm
shelves the green-lit décor
a chicken bone and Catholic
school what I have learned
is instead of being funny
just talk about triangles
hanging on white walls
the weird will happen
math emotions a geometry
like which-year-Texas-
Instrument calculator
you wrote 80085 on
was it 84 was it 83
what I learned everything
is improvisational
the drink selection
the sidewalk ice the
weather our atoms
bouncing off each
other’s atoms in
quantum uncertainty
where will this go
if we sew shut our
fervent minds and
listen to what we
don’t know next
will ever happen,
ever
(originally published in Stickman Review, Winter 2022)
After the breakup, our phone conversations
become space debris, steel pieces hardly
discernible hurtling haphazardly at five miles
per second. Where do the scraps go?
The gold taste of summer will impact the brain
and puncture, enflame. We wish to assist
the start-ups who seek to construct
machines to eliminate wayward spares
of satellites trapped in the gravity of a body,
propel its dust into the atmosphere to burn.
We drift wary of small artifacts
from failed missions to emerge
in the distance of night to strike
and make split into fragments
we will never assemble again.
(originally published in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Spring 2017)