The closest I will ever be
to the moon is on this plane
over Charlotte, returning
from my cousin’s wedding
in Huntsville, Alabama.
Face pressed against
the window I overlook
the wing where light
reflects off wing– a
certain curved angle
makes two moons.
Earlier, the sunset
was rust. This morning,
we had brunch
at The Broken
Egg, my distant family
sat across the
table from me,
the length
of a Filipino flag,
the closest
we will ever be.
(originally published in The Round, Spring 2025)
If God is
thine god
let my country
be mine
I don’t
want
to
invade
anywhere
you don’t belong
if hunger be
a gift let it eat
my own heart
right through
the wrapping
(originally published in Delta Poetry Review, Summer 2025)
Frisbee thrown by my brother at
our mother’s home, rising with wind–
he asks a question I can’t catch.
(originally published in International Poetry Review, Spring 2025)
Oblivious to the approaching hard-
ships of the road, the sleeping leaves
with years of nourishment wake
with you in your mom’s backyard,
under dark sky and pine boughs.
Those autumn days the wind blew,
singing, but remembering the song
has become too loud. Place your palm
against the bark to soften its voice, cease
the rustling. Come inside now. Walk
through your memories like in a dream.
(originally published in EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2023)
Whom I never met, would be buried in Akron,
the backdrop of sleepless drunk nights, wandering
park properties as if I owned them in my boisterous
consumption, alive but for the thrill of spending
time with those I wish eternity upon, gathered
before me the gargoyles, the hellraisers, the love
I could burrow underneath rain-pocked heartache,
one golden anniversary away from immortality
on a slab of stone drunk kids can stumble over
and plant their knees in the recycled mud.
(originally published in Impspired, Summer 2023)
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)
mosquito in the wind I itch my heavy
soil in the little dynamite world I in-
habit the ghost of some nonsense
brioche a thunderclap stumbling
down the wedding aisle in front
of family some worlds you never
lie about but break you must
pinch the nerve that binds you
and open the gold hole to the
masses that want to help. let them.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Summer 2023)
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)
For a time, I convinced my mother to write
mini memoirs of her farmer childhood
in the Philippines. In one, a monkey bites
her during a nap in a hammock; in another,
she falls from a tree onto a snakebite,
and her father tosses her into the Pacific.
This morning, she tells me of
leading a goat on a rope
up a hill. At the top, it starts to rain
and the goat runs back down.
I tell my mom she should write this.
She says, no, you should.
So I ask how did you feel
being dragged by a goat?
My mom looks to the ceiling,
patterns of neural pathways
on a sea of white.
She says, I wanted to cook him
for dinner. He scratched my arm
I couldn’t untie the goat from the tree
to eat grass but he didn’t like rain,
he smelled rain, smelled the smoke
out of the fog, the smoke up the mountain
smoke from where the ground is so warm
it evaporates, and you hear raindrops, the wind
blowing while crying the goat was very strong,
when you’re a kid it feels like a water slide
only no water on top of hills going down
trying to run – in the Philippines that’s how
it feels when you get dragged by a goat, she went into
water – jumped into the river – a forever pool – rock you jump
over it’s deep – after rain and flood washed out all dirt
when water turned clear back when I was kid – like after
the flood no leeches would come with leeches I hollered
and nearly stabbed a leg with a knife – neighbor cut
his leeches and his leg – plenty of leeches in our river – flood
clears leeches – flood clears everything – the flood will drag you all
the way to the ocean
(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Winter 2022)
I am reading old journals, putting
pieces of my past in place–
a series of staircase Tetris shapes,
a broken board mixing L.A. palm
fronds with bad haircuts Dad
gave me, but we needed to save
money, and I was bratty. I wanted
video game anime hair but got slanted
bangs laughed at by classmates and
teachers (who would never admit they
found it funny). I knew, and still do.
Sharp laughter edged in memory. I
want to say I’ve gotten over it. Over
all of it. But I still hold the smoky
gray of Nintendo controller in both
hands, and I am trying to move the pieces
where they need to go– but I am
older and life is faster, blocks falling
into places I can no longer find them,
stacking dark spaces to the top of my
screen after these earlier, easier years.
(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)