In Kathleen’s apartment in Oregon,
I ask her where even is home?
Clevelanders-turned-transplants,
maybe never knowing.
I see my mom’s mown lawn
in the green fields our baseball
team travels through, my friends
in tweets spitting scores or stats.
These, I don’t care about,
but I join in discussion.
Blue hands to high-five,
then to put my phone down.
(originally published in Hobart, Winter 2018)
because I repeatedly disregard that which is shaped like a diamond
to be a diamond,
I will flirt with the skateboard girl
who zooms away
& lament our love, lost
as yesterday’s blackened ganja.
living on the beach,
scraping sand
for a seagull’s Dorito–
we are crevices in the Santa Monica boardwalk.
we slip out from ourselves
without knowing
yet know ourselves sunken
deep in the tar ocean
& yet, somewhere, still there
from many years of being the ones
who collect what others discard,
making space in our own diamond-shaped boxes
(originally published in Eunoia Review, February 2016)