I am a sun-drenched willow field withered and
purple. Headache remiss, wonder when the liver
will churn its nightly clarion call, squeezing rags
to drag the water out.
Sometimes the nights are like that in the silence
between friends. The drafts replace talking.
You can’t hear the words with breath so still
and distant, willows soon awakening.
(originally published in Transcendence Magazine, Summer 2016)
I do not perceive you as obsessed with death
even if, days before, our jovial talks of dying
led to sugar-frosted blue wondering at the sky.
We planned to pop champagne for the birth
of feeling alive: winter hardens soil so we must dig
to the laughter we share in our spines.
We did not drink white wine, but the beer was breath
without knowing the scent– like any year,
we were paintings of light and dark, of limb
and bone so disordered to stand is a triumph,
and hope is a kaleidoscope, a conjecture.
Each dying wave returns, even at the frayed edge
of memory, how the dead are lavish with flowers
and stories. Still, we press on to uncork
our champagne future: drafts of breath in each
new year, dead waves haunting the mortal tide
with no specific beginning, no obvious end.
(originally published in Liquid Imagination, Summer 2016)
I would walk to the ends of the Earth for you or,
more accurately, to the brunch spot a few
blocks down the street to spend ten dollars,
ten minutes with a runny yolk on a southern
chicken breast sandwiched in a biscuit, while
your silver-haired friend buys your meal and shares
his own, he who kindly asks if I want more water
because he could always use more, like all of California
during my time there; he who gushes about the beauty
of rain-soaked Seattle, how in a three-sixty swivel
hills lush green and you never feel more alive.
I cannot help but agree that, yes, the Pacific Northwest
has a fog which casts a pall over my slinking shadow, loses it;
yes, casts a spell on my marionette body, slackens my spine
to skeleton-cast my demotion of confidence to learn, no–
to move back east from the west is not that unique.
Ladies are not impressed with artifacts,
rust coating that less authentic time.
(originally published in Down in the Dirt, Spring 2016)
I showed you how pawns function
on a glass chessboard
they sacrifice themselves to protect who they love
and what rooks and knights risk
in the modern age
there is a hierarchy in how to approach things
cigarette smoke permeated the wooden air
a phonograph streamed Brahms
I could never quite understand complexity
we sat on couch crumbs with our jeans touching
your friend gave me a rare Bahamian seashell
mottled with beige and caramel
I could not hear the ocean
no matter how hard it pressed against my ear
but with my head against your chest
I remember the beating tide
back then I was composed of sand
scooped whole by strangers hands
learning the gravity of myself
before dissipating
one day
I will build you a castle
(originally published in Walking is Still Honest, Summer 2016)
wandered along the avenue to find Kurt
sitting at the mountain of a three-step staircase
don’t come up here he laughed
but the neighborhood spun faster
than the blue room I escaped
so I continued to High along the alleys
of wafting leaked gasoline and nectars
of dried roses this was not spring
but the cold allowed me briskly hack time
in a direction indicating forward
where I pleat the confines of the sidewalk’s
imaginary boundaries I drifted from
but felt motionless and free
(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2016)
To run away would prove
the wild still within me,
taming that short fence with my claws
to catapult into the trees where birds
and squirrels and spiders sleep alone.
I look starward when you lure me
out among the sparrows. I am no monster
who lurks in twilight, but sometimes
exist memories I never made, when cool air
rushes into me through the window screen
like the moon commanding the tide–
I am not fully water but, like you, an animal embedded
with her feral past– my sisters teach me to hunt,
mice dangling from their mouths that haunt afternoon naps
on your heavy bed– my beautiful sisters never knowing
how it feels to be a princess, gold and pink
tiaras glistening between their royal ears.
I would not belong in those sprawling
forests from my dreams. The hunger
from the wild’s lack of you
would tremble my true heart home
under starlight’s navigation– to here,
where my whiskers graze your calves,
where I am cradled in your arms
in the company of heartbeat:
a sweetness, a tenderness
the feral could never dream of.
(Originally published in VAYAVYA, Spring 2016)
I know you want to leave, to take a bus
out of Columbus, to fight your battle
in Seattle, or Denver, or wherever
your heart may lead–
to be a nomad is to go
where the landscape dreams,
and to scrunch it all in your hand
like wisps of dandelion in the wind,
and in your palm its feathery white
is dissolution–
however far you go, know those you meet
will occupy the rooms in the tiny hostel
of your heart, sharing wisdom and laughter
despite however many days we spend apart.
(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2016)
boys who would be future men
squealed at new Pokemon.
mimicked moves, karate'd birds
flapping and winging and flinging
OVER NINE THOUSAND!
miles per hour
and things
eight-dollar K-B Toys
always break
blue mega man
onto metal bunk
bed swung
CLANKCLUNK
sprints'a from kitchen, lotsa surge,
hi-ye-ho bullet train
small-scale rail
the basement
digging
digging through purple bin
TREASURE! TREASURE!
homemade pogs; on one side
the cut-out cartoons
from game manuals, Zero so cool
his long blonde hair, red armor
give me his sword no
it's mine
x-buster
circular cutting
rise to heroes controlled
control was so easy
yes, yes, think of life–
death in digital terms
those boys were the masters then
the future men and their
cold basement summers
(originally published in Suburban Diaspora)