Fortune: lines lead somewhere
hopeful, but a jumbled mess.
Our palms wrinkle quickly.
We’re at a loss to say.
The American Interstate
is visible from space.
City lights a horde
of blinking phones.
Severed cables hang
over every intersection.
Tires, wires, water bottles
amassed hill-high.
A crow watches from the top,
her head in and out of smog.
(originally published in Evening Street Review, Summer 2022)
I sit by the fan
this May afternoon
alive forever
in the green
of our home-
made salad
(spinach, chickpea,
yellow pepper, tahini),
sore and sweaty
from carrying air
conditioners up
steep hallway stairs.
Using the heat-
gun and pliers
I straighten
my brain’s
antenna.
Our argument
becomes static
on a tube TV
in someone
old’s living
room.
(originally published in San Antonio Review, Winter 2023)
Went to Thursdays with
a friend who quit boot
camp but hates this bar so
left. I am good at waiting in
darkness, alone, drinking.
Other friends come but are
clung on by creepers. I Woke
Up Today by Port O’Brien
plays and suddenly we’re on
the precipice of another Ohio
summer! I high-five Rabbit
AKA High-Five Guy who is
an Eagle Scout. He buys us
shots of Crown and Coke,
then throws his glass into
the air, aiming for the roof.
But there is a hole in the roof
and the glass follow’s gravity’s
stringent rules and shatters
on the kaleidoscope everywhere.
The bald, black-eyed bouncer
points a finger and we are back
on the streets, the future still
shards in our powerful palms.
(originally published in The Beatnik Cowboy, Spring 2023)
I ate five scoops of Breyers chocolate-peanut butter
ice cream and still want more–
this, after two “meals” of beef-
flavored nothing noodles (Maruchan ramen)
I’m thirty (and a half)
When do I stop running
from “the good future”
I see it through the
crystal balls of rich kids’ Instagrams
Say it with me:
I AM LIVING IN THE PAST.
clap emoji
I WANT WHAT YOU HAVE.
clap emoji clap emoji
dancing girl emoji
But here’s the thing.
Earth spins so much it’s dizzying.
I’m running the opposite direction
to meet my past self but that fucker
doesn’t want to rendezvous.
The future called
and told me to put the phone down, you’re
sweating arsenic
and They were right. I needed
a shower to cleanse myself of everything
before the neighbors made a stink about my stench.
(originally published in SCAB Magazine, Summer 2020)
It is depressing to walk outside.
No one of no ones, my formlessness
would be dazzling, if you knew to
look, a vapor in the shape of memory.
I know the sensation of a crowd.
Faraway fear of missing out
in my own backyard– back
to that old mindset. Life of
lives– tenth iteration? I have
planted some sense of evolution.
Everyone’s growing gardens,
hunched over greens
of potted soils, warning
the world of rabbits. I
chase the idea I’ll never
be settled anywhere. Love
to be alone but don’t know
what to do with my hands
when I am. Nor could I be
a surgeon. Or a fisherman–
imagine me, who can’t swim,
casting a net into the lake.
A splash of water and I’m
wishing for a wishing well.
(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2022)
and will work too much the next.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is diminishing–
I’m in the office sixty hours a week.
How was I supposed to know
to gaze into a distant glint?
I haven’t seen a star in years.
If not under a canopy of clouds
a canopy of smog.
If I had a kid she’d be grown now.
Instead our world is warming and
I drive down the street each day
guzzling jugs of precious resource–
we’re waiting on the water wars.
The water wars are now.
(originally published in Sybil Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)
I was asked to write a poem
to read at your wedding.
I have been writing for weeks.
I don’t know what I’m trying to do
but I know it’s something new.
Mostly the poem has become my life.
Mostly it’s a poem of longing
for what the poem in me longs for.
Mostly it is a poem of the fight between desire
and desire.
Mostly it is a poem of desire
from the poem’s point of view.
Maybe the poem is a poem of love.
Though like most loves, the poem is a little
exasperated.
The poem seems at the moment
to be in the middle of a struggle.
The poem says the poem is struggling.
The poem says it wants more
than this.
The poem wants to try and try again.
The poem wants you
to write a new poem for it.
It hopes it will then write a new
vow.
I don’t know why I made myself
the center of this.
I don’t know why I seem to be
the only person in the poem.
How’s this: I said I was going
to love you forever.
I believed it.
I believed in it.
I didn’t expect the word forever
to seem anachronistic.
What do you mean,
forever?
Who told you
the wedding poem is for you?
Who told you the wedding poem
has to mean anything?
The wedding poem is a poem
about the poetry we dream.
I see you on the stage.
You are on the stage with me.
You found a poem you loved
and someone reads us its vows.
We try to see the future.
We try to see the poems we are
even though we might not know them.
We try to see the future.
I try to see the future.
We try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about the dream.
I try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about to happen.
It has become a poem for you.
It has become a poem for me.
This is a poem about the poem that isn’t
yet.
I struggle to see a poem
about to happen.
I struggle to see the poem about to happen.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
I can’t talk about money I have none
I am green in love in the black in life
the debt of my ancestors I am
someone’s deficient ancestor
though my family is dying
one at a time deeper
into ground and deeper into soil
the sound of my sister
sobbing though she can’t be here
at the funeral she would if
she could
there’s always next time
(originally published in Ariel Chart, Winter 2021)
It was easy
in college
for every profile pic
to be a drunk photo
smiling. Beer cans
in hands in a bar,
at the beach,
in a house, in
a car. We were
all young and
happy
thinking us
adults. Legally,
sure, yes.
We were.
But the me
in those photos
wasn’t thinking
about bills
the endless
stack of debt
I still cannot
afford.
Of which
I was
in those moments
accumulating.
Like snow clouds
beckoning
over Lake Erie
I hoped would
cancel class
so I could drink.
(originally published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Fall 2018)
i carry infection in saliva
like a point of pride
see, my city reeks of bone
tall skeleton skyscrapers
i’m numb again
as dental drill enters me
year after year
what birthed my decays?
raised to desire new
wants every day
wanting even wanting
my dad worked at a ford factory
after the great depression
churned out a new kid
every few years
seasons of rust
spreading on steel
here’s the sunset
he’d wake us to say &
spend the days molding
the yard
rough hands on saw
that was satisfactory
to him
for me oaks are cold towers &
grass not godmade
took a clump in my mouth
from the graveyard as a child &
i swear i tasted
death
but could not digest it
i’m but a skeleton
all life’s experiences
slip through me
masticating childhood
no pondering
the future with mom and dad
scooping fries at ponderosa &
we’d always go for seconds &
mint ice cream after
(originally published in Burningword Literary Journal, Fall 2018)