So fruitless is the search,
any search. I thought
the wetness of fresh
strawberries were
diamonds but I am still
poor, though my
spirit rages bright.
The ghosts of my
grandparents are
working hard in
the nothingness
of afterlife.
When it is my time,
they will be at an airport
holding a sign with
my name, waving
wildly as an oak
during a storm.
I will wave back,
not knowing
the ubiquity
of rain.
(originally published in The Beatnik Cowboy, Winter 2024)
Death
The Dog Is Always Greener
the dog is always
greener
in the land of
pleasant living
if we could pour
our hands
over the promise
of fence
into wild dandelion
weeds of
contentment
on a fake summer
day
the reticent
dog is the one
to pet
not the meme
celebrity
husky
or perhaps
we want
to live again
in the way
that dogs do
refreshing
the page
every fourteen
seconds
or days or
years
the grandma
calls this celebration
of life a resort
and we call
the dealer’s hand
too forgetful
to recall
the spade
drafted in
the lush
unkempt
garden
shuffle
the cards
repeatedly
to delay
the inevitable
(originally published in Pinhole Poetry, Fall 2023)
Bro
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)
Cracked Windshield
Sudden the stone that cracked
the windshield, the storm that
struck the heirloom oak– you
ask for rain, beg for answers.
Soaked hands steer through
the blindness of the blur–
ten years now since Dad
merged into the final lane,
his pass misjudging distance
from collision, and that night
Mom heard a screeching
in her bedroom like a crow
passing from another world,
a bleak siren thrusting her
to darkness her headlights
could not cut through.
(originally published in Kingdoms in the Wild, Winter 2021)
The Basement
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)
Where We Are Going
My hand gentle on the vibration of DQ’s back.
We ascribe memories to animals. Anthropomorphism
is our system. Kingsford’s scent lies on fewer and fewer
surfaces– we vacuumed his hairs, changed the covers
this August of grieving, and in bed we say
the living one dreams of her human family. If ever
there was a before in this cat’s life, if ever she could
recant her past to us– what I hate about the cage is
not the sick animal inside it, but that I can’t explain
where we are going, or why, just he needs to trust
me, beyond all his mewling (we pass a fish truck
on Penn Avenue in sunlight) – trust me: where
we are going will end your suffering.
(originally published in Kalopsia Lit, Spring 2022)
Low-Visibility Night Drive Home
For Tarik
highway needles appear
fast white lines I bullet
along an aimless angle
fate a roll of die half my
life I have had my license
tonight asphalt is slippery
and tenuous when I spend
too much time alone only
the hum of engine knowing
tires hiss more air the further
I go do not devalue yourself
the chanting mass says my
head loud roiling in ninety-mile
-per-hour grief I did not know
Tarik as well as those who knew
but I miss him should have
called in this ubiquitous darkness
smoke leather peeling off my
ten-year steering wheel a passing
truck sprays my windshield
mist this sharp steady rain Reek
drove a convertible he may have
been drenched but he would
have laughed made it seem okay
if I knew his misery if I could
see behind his laughter
mask the off-ramp winding
curve onto the final highway
home in his deep empathy
Reek drove this stretch of night
after switching off his lights
(originally published in Fine Lines, Fall 2021)
Death Is Not Real Until You View the Body
Even then, horror films teach us
to anticipate limbs rising from
coffin, wails from a mouth who
once had all teeth extracted
on a routine dentist visit.
If you never see the body,
death never happened.
My brother, who did not learn
to swim, sailed with the Coast
Guard. After that he never left
Ohio again. He is confined
somewhere, beyond some wall,
as far from me now
as he was before.
(originally published in The Headlight Review, Winter 2022)
Shots
At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me
2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.
At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone
who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You
cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard
cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy
against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite
side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.
And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?
Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.
(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)
Breathless Electric Silence
the dead friend you are thinking of
says the sky’s no longer the limit
inside there are good spaces
between us you wanna press
the green button on your existence.
that is what he would have wanted:
to arrive. one day you will awaken
barefoot under a leafy blanket
in your dress shirt & blue tie
and he will live inside your eyes
the way ants share summer
crumbs
(originally published in indicia lit, Summer 2022)