Fortune: lines lead somewhere
hopeful, but a jumbled mess.
Our palms wrinkle quickly.
We’re at a loss to say.
The American Interstate
is visible from space.
City lights a horde
of blinking phones.
Severed cables hang
over every intersection.
Tires, wires, water bottles
amassed hill-high.
A crow watches from the top,
her head in and out of smog.
(originally published in Evening Street Review, Summer 2022)
half-sunk in a bog you take a photo and I say no
no no not quite like Amy Winehouse but if we sing to
a hedonistic youth I want to enter every swamp
and declare my love for alligator bites you say
you’re taking an artistic risk you swear will pay
off because yesterday after rent you went
to the post and mailed a hundred letters to a hundred
lovers I held your scratched satchel you said would
become the mark of our marked love and there isn’t
enough space in this world to become expendable
not with seven point seven billion hungry
humans all seeking something different
(originally published in San Antonio Review, Winter 2023)
When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine
Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating
it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient
in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave
at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-
years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.
(originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Fall 2020)
For David and Anna
Rain is never insurmountable,
and the sun never gets old,
though we plan to, together,
to grow with green things
sprouting at our feet. We
watch new trees become
wise while the landscape
shifts, as it must, and though
Earth spins briskly– almost
beyond what we can fathom–
it has order, being as small
and in love as we are.
We stand on our plot
of land, firm though
flung through time and
space, the universe we
made forever expanding.
(originally published in The Vineyard, Winter 2023)
I equate falsities with wheat; groves as tea-
leaves in lands of blue sun. I confuse distance
with fair weather– idols in my mind: the beach
or Joshua trees. Golden fields have I never tilled.
Toiled, yes, in my lugubrious way, driving through
vast swaths of America, pasteurized pastures often
teeming with cows. Thinking of scale, it is
impossible to be upset at mathematics. But
I do aim anger at trajectory. For years I had
my eyes closed, pointed at a spinning globe.
When I opened them, in Mom’s basement,
my feet were planted where I remembered.
(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Summer 2021)
the cicadas are out
early don’t be
alarmed by the
coming swarms build a memory
of winter build
a memory of here
I loved what we had
cold glove
in warm hand
but now when growing old I know
I didn’t do enough to do my part
the wandering joyrides burning ghosts of
dinosaurs from gunky lungs of millennium
sedans cigarettes in our mouths tv the endless
bedlamps they say sleep is best in total
darkness o how I wasted more than I knew
on those daily long commutes
(originally published in Orange Quarterly, Winter 2019)
to stay alive I must believe I am water
inside my own body inside the river
my living an arrow shot into the forest
ghost slashed open by every stranger
who claims to walk on water when
nothing but air parting is the motion
of feet scrambling to become some
sacred proclamation it is not
(originally published in S/WORD, Fall 2018)
What you do say is prayer don’t burn and die
when passing through the atmosphere.
Yet, somehow, meteoroids do–
though sand-sized, they have bodies
like bullets, sometimes
copper, sometimes steel.
We’re talkin’ heaven’s ammo,
a hundred tons pounding Earth each day
unnoticed. Down here, you claim
able to speak with some cosmic, faraway force
you’ve never met while keeping closed your mouth.
You claim telepathy, so this telepathic ability
how your thoughts move healing this world
of the aftermath of bodies. Tell me:
how does God respond?
And you say God,
God protects the faithful.
So, God’s His own meteorites
cratering His house, hallelujah.
(originally published in Ohio Edit, Winter 2018)
I am a sitting landfill beef
lettuce special sauce
a sepulchur in my Ford
& in this warm January
the trees are still dead
one eye open I imagine
forests stretching tired
legs & staying silent when it’s time
to speak spring
(originally published in KAIROS, 2017)
Wait for the sun to shine past noon.
Palm trees quiver in a vortex of goosebumps.
The universe revealed itself
as a skeleton in the sky.
Vertebrae wisps, stoic.
Jets soared through bone rings
and whispered softly to faraway swans.
Gaze into the galaxy – golden
stalagmites in deep caves – we understand
that we scatter like gulls
only to congregate again
and dance above the sea.
All the swirling rainbow colors
in the reflections from puddles
unravel the universe
from a spool. As
thread slowly sways,
forget
what we understood.
(originally published in Syzygy Poetry Journal, Vol. I, No. II)