and I am on fire too ready
to burn Panera down
no one really wants this hospital
food its chemicals inside
that make it breathe the bread
is moving if you watch
close enough its heartbeat
in your mouth we are all on
fire this former dead living
animal a baguette string inside
my intestines there are wings
in my salad flapping dead cells
floating and all I can do is be
the sun and burn the whole world
then flush my throat with water
(originally published in Madness Muse Press, Fall 2020)
I need this walk through the suburbs
summer heat has me a certain way
lovers have me a certain way
I need to clear my head with the zen
of weedwackers droning, an SUV’s blur and
whoosh, lawnmowers torturing the grass–
white noise, white birds, white hybrids.
walked with white sneakers in the mud
last night drunk in the rain through an alley
(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)
I lost the important things
sweeping baguette crumbs
underneath an industrial
fan– cyclicality, the broom’s sashay
from one end of the room to
the next– sand blown from the center
of the desert, and how selfish
to keep water in the bottle
with other mouths to nurture.
(originally published in Adelaide, Fall 2019)
We used to be the same, used to
dance in living rooms in Grandview
houses, drunk on homemade Moscow
Mules in copper mugs, and then
you said you would no longer.
With a glass of emptied ice
water, you’d drip out the fronts
of bars without a noise.
(originally published in Live Nude Poems, Spring 2019)
Broken bottles on the bridge
above the blue Olentangy.
My time in this city is
limited, as is my body,
the future a compromise,
shards from the persistence
of believing in transcendence.
The sweltering sun pummels
my skin, exposed, as I wait for
a sign to cross the river road.
(originally published in indefinite space, Spring 2019)