My lungs have drowned in fluid–
I can’t stop coughing. Who am I
to survive in all this death
and pollution? Land-dweller, ill-
fitted? The sea regurgitates
its dead– whales on white sand
shores, fish entwined in kelp.
The old organisms– from where
we began– return to land,
beg us to let them walk.
(originally published in Freshwater Review, Spring 2020)
(originally published in Belletrist, Summer 2017)
The fractured stone tunnel hollows.
Browned winter leaves
crackle into crumbs.
Birds’ humming stirs into
a white blanket of silence.
That’s when we deadlock to distrust
& wake, shirts faded, stained
with verbal gunshots. Never
too early for shared cocktails,
never too healthy, or sick,
for what you know to be lodged
in your esophagus, bits of
chicken & asparagus held
together as a spell, or a mantra:
shake me, martini, shake me.
Make me loathe a little more.
(originally published in Random Poem Tree, Winter 2016)