Shuffleboard in Tampa is sliding into the DMs
of a box of saltines and eating each stack whole
if you dominate otherwise you drink leftover
juice from a friend’s friends’ wedding while
waiting for what you wanted forever on
the coast of happiness the cusp of sweet
custard overflowing with berries.
(originally published in The Waiting Room, Summer 2023)
grape stem the fruit centipede
parched time
a skin between my teeth
fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl
then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place
thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest
lips purple with last night’s wine
new year burst with pessimism not
optimism beginnings are overrated
I do best when I don’t know where I’m going
(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)
I counted twelve hundred drops of rain
to cull the drought in the desert
but at some indeterminate future
coordinate. There isn’t even a crowd
to be lost in anymore– human bodies
dissipate into pixels on a stuttering
screen. Listen to her voice. Listen
to his voice. What we are drinking
when we speak is a potent purple
cocktail: dragonfruit, chia,
pineapple, banana, ginger,
vodka, rum. I know you
are close when you made it
but the rain’s still far away.
(originally published in San Antonio Review, Fall 2020)
Bananas everywhere make me hungry.
The doormat, the neon sign, the sticker
on your Apple– I can’t help it. My
cuteness doesn’t preclude that I am part
wolf. A ruthless hunter. When I run
across the rug to your room I want you
to throw fruit on the floor just to bite off
the peels. I’ve had my eyes on inedible Ethel
the Christmas Chicken when I learned she’s
still a chicken. For once I want a sandwich.
Put me in your cart with a potato gun
at Sam’s and we’ll hold that whole
place up. As you ransack the banana stand,
I’ll loot the deli and meet you in the middle.
(originally published in Jokes Review, Summer 2020)
Since finishing your fruit-themed chapbook
you claim to have squeezed every sour
word yet zing. You say all you wanted
was to keep in contact. Tonight we try
to unpeel these last lost months
with talking but instead halve
ourselves dry at the table. I thought
our juice would stay fresh, purify
water all that time. At least, you said,
that would have made this easier to digest.
(originally published in Ink&Nebula, Spring 2018)
Sweet-suckled Slovenian lips–
Cleveland where I found you,
Columbus were you lost.
Some days a black blanket
we would lay under to seek stars
seeking something cold &
how our temperatures dropped
over the years. We’d burn nights
matchstick young, whiskey and coke,
peel clothes to cool– so the blades.
Puckered and bundled, how to cut
& create tiny crescent moons.
(originally published in The Penmen Review, 2018)
clatter. chew
through apples (nothing).
half a meal, half a pine,
half of what we hoped for,
if.
the way a core reveals itself inedible,
though we knew.
from day one, bites
and bites.
sometimes the juice sweetness
overpowers slow rot.
it was early on, and worms
had yet to emerge from their holes
in the ground to greet us.
all we had to do
was wait for rain.
(originally published in First Literary Review – East, Winter 2018)