I am begging for you to be well.
At Spirit in Lawrenceville.
Lung cancer
I can’t
stand this for you. I
love you enough to know
this world
is too crowded without
you & me standing
around, heads bobbing,
at another live show
at a smoky dive bar,
asking each other
what we want next
& how much more
dearly in this life can
we stand to lose?
(originally published in Ink Pantry, 2025)
Let’s go to Wildwood and get lost in
the rough waves of September. Stand
further from shore than ever, where
water’s shallow, sand firm though
fine enough to spiral into thoughts
where its strength dissipates and you
sink into a rough wave. Sometimes
what you need is to be pummeled by
the Atlantic. If you are not careful,
you could drown, but in the cerulean
calm of caesura, waves break all
around and forgive you. When
it is offered you want the air frigid
in the warmth of your sequence
of days so it can thrash the
fragileness of body and you will
not know what you have craned
your neck for. You’ll pull out
binoculars to view onlookers
on a distant, speeding sailboat
and you will see your life,
how fast it will pass.
(originally published in Stink Eye Magazine, Fall 2022)
you said the first time I picked you up
on our way to a family-style dinner &
then we drove through curvy hills I am
not yet comfortable with, the darkness
now so fitting.
I came empty-
handed, I didn’t want to drink
too much then drive you home. &
we didn’t know anyone who’d be
at our table but you’re better with
strangers. The restaurant was on
a corner facing a bus stop, &
people watched as I drove doughnuts
around the dual-railroad tracks
adjacent, seeking a place to park
not marked by sign or road decay.
I wanted to talk to you more
about anything, but you opened
my driver door
& walked me in.
(originally published in Words & Whispers, Winter 2023)
lost contact walking
in circles around franklin
village you wanted to be alone
at the festival of rockets
you paid for everything
we met at the coffeepot
concert steamer summers
spent in a young galaxy
where we both loved
desert guitars
the avenue droughts
and cold
basements
(originally published in Rabid Oak, Spring 2022)
Hard to say goodbye a bunch
of jumbled words
this freeform
scrabble of knowing our
ups and downs two
poets at the game café
hovering over August
and detonate
this limited time we have
cloaked ourselves
we slap plastic
tiles and yell peel
racing not to say goodbye
I’ve got a few days left
in the parking lot after
we clutch each other
unsure whether to cry
in the authentic light of sunset
(originally published in Freshwater Literary Journal, Spring 2022)
I was new to this
kind of longing
sticky all my fingers
on red fingernail cups
but I was a visitor I was a loner
I lived in my car
a couch was a luxury
four cats purred and clawed
at me I couldn’t sink anything
into the drinks. I sank
but made myths I missed
everyone in Akron everything
that happens to you
sticks to you. swish
there was a way to
live in all places at once.
Pittsburgh Columbus Akron
Los Angeles. my memories
are mine and they are selfish. I cling
to what I forget which is what
I drink away which is all
the spills over all the years
I haven’t yet wiped clean.
(originally published in The Seventh Quarry, Summer 2023)
For Tarik
highway needles appear
fast white lines I bullet
along an aimless angle
fate a roll of die half my
life I have had my license
tonight asphalt is slippery
and tenuous when I spend
too much time alone only
the hum of engine knowing
tires hiss more air the further
I go do not devalue yourself
the chanting mass says my
head loud roiling in ninety-mile
-per-hour grief I did not know
Tarik as well as those who knew
but I miss him should have
called in this ubiquitous darkness
smoke leather peeling off my
ten-year steering wheel a passing
truck sprays my windshield
mist this sharp steady rain Reek
drove a convertible he may have
been drenched but he would
have laughed made it seem okay
if I knew his misery if I could
see behind his laughter
mask the off-ramp winding
curve onto the final highway
home in his deep empathy
Reek drove this stretch of night
after switching off his lights
(originally published in Fine Lines, Fall 2021)
there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic
*
once on a drive home from Central Catholic
I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
than at thirty-two anyway the kid
at the window said they couldn’t
but I insisted and the manager
smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
bag of my trunk to this day
*
pig meat
pig meat
in a sleeping bag of green
*
there is no way to eat a dog
there are ways to eat a hot dog
I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
I’ve opened plastic package
set skillet to flame
lain logs on drizzled oil
*
the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.
*
Went to a dollar dog minor
league game twenty cents per dog flies
buzzing in orbit of condiments
five the limit at the window so all
could see I had the buns. One each for
STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
AMBITION.
*
One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
city full of my father’s love
of baseball and barbecues. Now
there was an undisputed grill master.
Everyone knows one. I am not one.
There is no way to cook.
There is a way.
Wayne was over and we flicked
lit matches with our middle fingers
from thumbs into ready
charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.
*
My whole life I have been walking
away, not turning back to look.
(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)
I reach out– longing for connection.
When surrounded by seagulls, I look
for the first semblance of friend. Not
that we have much to anchor anymore,
conversationally. Dolzani’s English class.
I didn’t read assigned books. Didn’t
become The Old Man and The Sea. So
many years to make safe passage. My voice
was a heavy, closed hardcover, whispering
through class as pages turned, and here
I am, strange and estranged, gazing out
over the Pacific, waiting for your response
on my seashell phone. Any sign of humanity
meant I would try. You never answer, anyway.
I unmoor my flaming boat to the coming
monsoon, scrape my hand against burning
plank to gather first ashes. I write my name in
soot. I hold my breath and swoosh into the next
life: the hold-on-to-me, the help-me, the drive-
aimlessly-through-your-twenties until arriving,
at last, at another confused island, a new
decade of drifting through cloudless nights.
(originally published in Cacti Fur, Summer 2021)
the dead friend you are thinking of
says the sky’s no longer the limit
inside there are good spaces
between us you wanna press
the green button on your existence.
that is what he would have wanted:
to arrive. one day you will awaken
barefoot under a leafy blanket
in your dress shirt & blue tie
and he will live inside your eyes
the way ants share summer
crumbs
(originally published in indicia lit, Summer 2022)