You didn’t take me seriously
when I said I was qualified.
It’s okay. Money grows
on certain trees, and people
like you pluck them leaf-
less. I want to hold the roots
in my hands, my long and
hardened hands. I want to make
a phone call on your behalf.
I wish I had a trust
fund. Someone I trust
to grow within me.
A seed that sees
how dark the world
becomes without
the light to grow,
planted anyway.
(originally published in Poetry Pacific, Spring 2025)
My olfactory nerve already overflooded with Acqua di Gio
on business cards beneath fluorescents, I did not expect
to run into my first love in the wilderness of Black Friday,
where hard rain was people. I sought a higher ground– escalator
to the bathroom to text my crush on my TracFone, until the arms
on my watch contorted a certain way. But my tarot cards flipped
when I recognized Kristen from afar, both of us unsure,
unlike in fifth grade, on the bus to Mohican, she slept
beside me, her hair fire on my shoulder, strobe lights of a confused
adolescence that entire week. Camp ended when everyone
contracted poison ivy. How to scratch the mind until snapping
back into self– in that present, years later, I thought she might be
fate and, thus, planned a coffee date, but because I did not
carve the path I wanted to take, winter came. And went.
(originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)
millions of workers
milling at their desktops
working on walking
a sentence through
a pasture then a group
of sentences laboring
up green hill
left step right
step sweat bearing
four-legged baah–
ing weights into a cloud
of words electronic
thunder into pamphlet
into hand into head
and then again
(originally published in Furtive Dalliance, Winter 2018)
Can’t even sustain myself with the hours
I work to make myself; a waterfall of dollars
and dreams splashing off wet stone. I hold no
heart hostage but my own; the heart holds me
hostage through beating, my breathing
a slow decay. In aging I prove nothing
to the universe except that I exist;
through the office, I prove I do not.
Despite the hours, the blood and bone
monuments I erect, then forget–
the steady draining of days worth
not enough to get me by.
(originally published in Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Spring 2018)
In the bask of computer light my boss
says watch for leaks in the room.
I know now what to pray for. Thunder
burps and rain’s radio static steadies
on the roof– a beating applause
that, for once, recognizes all the good
work I’ve done.
(originally published in Unlikely Stories Mark VI, Fall 2017)
drilling holes in the white wall
to repair the rest of the world
workshirts feed clocks’ hands
ticking forever
circular splash of rosewood paint
wound of silence spent
the loud city
will not silence me
(originally published in Eunoia Review, February 2016)
pure coffee pleasure
drinking work travels
camping parties get-
togethers at work when
the printer is jammed i
move the tray until the
deadlines variegating
ironic pleasures and
cogs who do not turn
sleep when moving
uninterrupted clear
jars have a shine that
lights carburetor engines
grasping understated harmonies
in Kevlar mugs in which
infested apples seek light
order menially crisscrossing
borders of yellow shades
mashing front-up wonderful
mistakes marketing harmonica-
maudlin skaters receipt
upon leaves and green
greens until the market
crashes and crashes and seventeen
times i heard Pop-Secret popcorn
pop in the breakroom microwave
(originally published in Chronopolis, No. 3 – October 31, 2014)
