Thought I was an optimist but I just watched a video with myself
and can’t stand the inflection of my voice, intoned up in ricochet
of empty space– the bouncing of a ping-pong ball off the table in
an empty room. I sniffle when I speak, stare out through open
window past your deadlocked eyes. The paradise is without
myself. To be enclosed in such close quarters with nothing
but the sound of myself saying my name, repeatedly, forever.
(originally published in Lucky Jefferson 365 Collection, Spring 2020)
Lavvy
in the coffee shop
you tuck a bundle
of lavender
into the v
of your shirt,
aim it at your nose
then type furious
emails to co-workers
gently
gently
(originally published in Crack the Spine, Fall 2018)
Wingdings
(originally published Spring 2017 in Belletrist, with a reprint in Wizards in Space)
Staying at Ben’s Apartment
was sad. The bathroom garbage bin
was empty except for a milky bag,
a milky bag. I spent a few days
staring at walls that lacked art, clocks,
plaques– wayward whites. I searched
the swinging ceiling fan for meaning,
its light hanging even as the nightmares
swirled and buoyed my sleep. On that
first midnight, I received an email
from Ema to confirm our petals had withered.
Desiccate yet still green somehow I slept
and slept and slept not anxious for the sun’s
return or its return to me, not that it did
for a while. I looked for this midnight whisper
days later to question again our phantoms,
sprinting through Gmail plains of text, but no,
this was a phantom, too. I whispered e-m-a with
my fingers into the search thus yielded darlings,
xoxo starlings and chains that floated from the
screen’s waterfall out into eternity, tethered
to the runoff running to that unknown place
where even phantoms go to die.
(originally published in Memoryhouse Magazine, spring 2016)
The Undo Feature in Gmail
Sometimes I say what I don’t mean.
There is an algorithm which can make me forget;
the others remind me to remember.
Your action has been undone. As if my actions
needed a separate undoing– I did not expect you,
with your raven hair, to perch our thousand
miles, thousand days to bottle time
and cast to sea, a folded note to be read
by a stranger at shore. Here, I am a knot
bound to be undone, tethered to a battered shoe,
and in the sprint, wind coarsens your hair.
In the cold we move closer and closer until the breathing
is stale and fogs my car’s windows, the outside world
turned gray. Confusing a fluorescent lightbulb for the moon,
I would risk one more rejection to bring you even nearer,
past the point of no return.
(Originally published in Corium Magazine, Spring 2016)