Night falls yet clematis retain their violet.
O overrated light please save our dying
breed of seeing. X-rays. Monocles.
To me you are a single stem breaking
from the dark. And I, the hand stenciling
jittering petals under jetstream.
(originally published in The Wayfarer, 2018)
here I look at the same room I’ve spent many nights in
the diffuser diffusing the world’s hues into you & me
the cat composed of smoke
Sara takes a sick day & the room crawls with veins
I watch my own age spiderweb into me flipping pages in a manuscript
this room is made of hair this room breathes fur webs
this is what brains are made of
every imprint of hand
when you sit down this bed this ocean floor this beginning
(originally published in Ariel Chart, Fall 2017)
you asked me to move in
or lose you Ben
Franklin is credited with
the early bird gets the worm
and also electricity
which became
the computer
I have a tic
wherein I set a clock
back twenty minutes
to make myself early
keep imagining
the string
and the storm
the kite so vivid and red
corporeal and endless
(originally published in Epigraph Magazine, Winter 2018)
Rather, it’s about the void she left
behind– no dirty dishes in the sink,
no hand to move the plates out
from the coffins of the cabinets.
Used to be hot soup was what
we wanted to come home to
when we wanted to come
home, but the chicken rots
in the fridge and even its
memory chokes on
cold forever air
(originally published in Poetry Pacific, Fall 2018)
or is it clay or is it ghosts I remember
muddy footprints you walking in from
rain white plate of cookies in sweat-palms
mud on floor you said sweet, sweet, sweet,
sweet children all those black nights the salty
wind knocking its way in through shut
windows the dead flowers in vases
received sunlight their daily bread
give us ours the ramshackle trinity of unclean
dishes filthy hands and the sticky fridge door
which wouldn’t open not for you
and certainly not for us
(originally published in Califragile, Fall 2017)
The movement
neither initiated.
The joysticks dance
in orchestral unison,
taking turns missing
the light on the screen.
The proximity advantage
of cooperation.
Our feather jackets brushed
and the crowd howled around us,
moved in herds – an infinite number
of lives in which to press
the red kick button. Not a red
exit. Not to drink water in excess
of the salt, shake it over,
shake your damn hands and clap
once, clap twice, shiver in the
thorn-wine applause– let us
shiver within our bones.
(originally published in Kaaterskill Basin, Spring 2018)
& part of her phrase of course is
if you can’t handle me at my worst
but there’s a left turn into darkness
no one wants to take &
the signal’s jammed so no one knows
the direction anywhere anymore
just a mirror of the night
reflecting night, a ninety
degree warming sadness glued
onto a body. one silhouette
low into evening, a heat repenting
unknown sin, a snake slithering
out from its hole into you
(originally published in Gyroscope Review, Fall 2017)
to cut immigration
is to cut me half
-Filipino I am already
halved quartered diced you take
a knife to my mother she keeps
a knife at her neck we both are
American in the blade of the word
I used to pretend to be more
my more-accepted half
to have to choose
is to have nothing
(originally published in Serving House Journal, Fall 2017)
I’m with Lex at Lockview
ordering tomato soup because
I just got out of a relationship.
I tell him I’m fine, though he never asked.
The bowl arrives alongside my Kentucky Bourbon
Barrel Ale. I slurp red and talk loudly
for the cute girl at the table behind me
wearing all black– we made eye contact
waiting for tables between entrance and exit–
she doesn’t hear me, probably,
but my friend watches me cremate crackers
over the bowl to spoon the goo inside.
He says slow down but I say life moves
fast– hell, I ingested magic mushrooms
after leaving my ex’s place then Lex
asks our waitress for his grilled cheese
without mushrooms and the waitress asks for menus
but I hand her my bowl and say take it please
take it then tell her I’m fine and it was wonderful
being in my house alone after this happened standing
on the kitchen table beside the silver chandelier
lined with black mold and dirt and how
I waited for anyone to come home
and no one did so I kept standing.
(originally published in OVS Magazine, 2017)
[the comedian approaches the stage in sunglasses
and a shiny black and green robe.]
Knock knock.
(Who’s there?)
I am.
There is no punchline.
Listen past your rush-hour heart.
I am up here breathing heavily.
Listen: I want you to laugh
and never stop. I am trying jokes
you did not know you wanted to hear.
I searched coast-to-coast for lands
who laugh with me, that tectonic shifting
from belly to chest.
Why did boys like me bring ladders to school?
We wanted to learn mountains and rarefied air.
To find reservoirs of laughter waiting.
What did 0 say to 8?
Nice belt!
(I don’t get that joke!)
But I want your holy, exhaled noise.
Relax.
What do you do if you see a spaceman?
You laugh. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here.
What he’s doing anywhere.
I offered myself to the ocean–
the entertainment industry.
She did not want.
The spotlight hungers for no one.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Why wouldn’t the chicken cross the road
if the chicken intended to cross the road?
Most everyone I know crosses the road
without looking both ways these days.
I do not call them chickens– they are my more realistic friends.
I want to make them laugh.
If you’re not laughing for me, laugh for them.
We are haunted by too many things:
dead friends, dead family, dead love,
dead strangers, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
You can be someone’s haunting sunlight.
Someone’s champion jester dispersing their marbles too good.
Look, a magic trick!
[he throws two playing cards onto the floor]
How do you catch a unique rabbit?
U nique up on it.
How do you catch a tame rabbit?
Tame way– u nique up
on something enough to latch onto–
just a hinge’s creak
before the mouth’s swing open, closed.
Some of us never leave that darkness.
The silent divide.
Laughter will bring us close.
I mean it when I say let’s laugh until we die,
even when what we laugh about isn’t funny.
I mean it when I say if you see a space, man,
park your car, man.
It’s over.
(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Fall 2017)