Noodles

tin colander holes parts of me peeking
out into the kitchen horizon    past the stove
which so very recently burned blue &
contained above potentially dangerous
gas    of which you were in control
unlike last night you did the right
thing  begging cathy not to drive
home  her slurring sentences
& drunken desperation  just
hours before  all three of us
together  I had to walk home
after downing Nosferatus
and you were there with her
drinking tequila when you called
to say now I really
have to say goodbye
but everything was fine you
arrived at your destination
but she wanted to
drive again the night
air thin
& shivering &
blue when she
departed

(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2021)

In Another Life I Am Content Enough

What simulation’s numb you ask
if I want children this time

definitive we boil Kraft mac
and cheese. I toss our meager sweet

potatoes in oil and ramble about financial
self-worth the oven nearly at four hundred

degrees. I can’t stop petting your shoulder
the ashy cat roams in the loam of our love

our newly swept hardwood the house
our home for now so limited already

steam from the inside a pressure
cooker of different timelines. What river

these converging lives to seek meaning
in the biological job postings some of us

are born to call. My dad was sixty-one
when I was born my grandfather clock

ticks nonexistent. We have gorged in all
our broken cabinets to rustle the blue

plastic grocery bag pile. I can’t stand
to live another day preoccupied.

(originally published in Flights, Summer 2021)

In the Future I Will Drink More Coffee

in the future i’d be watching you smoke
cigarettes
waving your smoke away
with cleaver hands

breakfast would come
we’d slice cucumbers in the wet-
snake leather kitchen
rectangular blade neatly fit
sink-soaked
the yolk in the sandwich a little drippy
warm & familiar

the electric stampede of spiders’ feet

never did the future weave
faint spiderweb strands

 

(originally published in Sobotka Literary Magazine – Issue #3)