among the blue desks was a meager
audition for adulthood crumpled
into a mess of wooden shadows reciting
barbell lines on the film school second
floor (stair steps closer to Orion) how
I was dreaming young of the world’s
grand magnanimousness suffused
with balloons that smelled of palm frond
everglades my school-sanctioned camera
would record the nightglow trees by lights
of Coe Lake where it snowed pine cones
in the backyard of my mother’s house
where acres stretch forever rugs of green grass
and hunger the endless hunger for somewhere
anywhere else
(originally published in KGB Bar Lit Mag, Spring 2021)