I am worried about the return
to normalcy the work of going
to work the work is what I am
doing what capitalists want
is your drive to drive x miles
with a red container of gas that
fuels us bright limitless stars
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
I.
After these exhausting days
who knows why I yell to no one
the things I yell on the way
to my car after work: gravel
grass and hill road buzzing
in the deepening sunset.
II.
The only relief I ever feel
is sunlight on my face
when leaving work–
the temporary confusion
of unsheathing one
unwanted part of me.
The breeze
greets me
like a once-friend,
my name
on the tip
of her tongue.
III.
Each minute– each second– beyond
when I am supposed to leave
wilts me. I look longingly out
the window mud-
stained in sunlight
I did well in the past
to ignore.
IV.
I get upset
having to spend
the remainder of
my meager self
racing
the end of day
light. I fight
my way through
traffic lights,
red in surrounding
eyes– to arrive
at my familiar
steps, already at
the foot of dawn.
V.
Morning
has that air
I like– half-
asleep possibility,
a natural neutrality,
a newness only possible
half-dreaming
beside the waving
branches.
VI.
Tonight, I spend my time
on an ice cream cone
with you. Under the full moon.
It makes my teeth hurt
but worth the work
a random hour a week
or two ago, when I was
sitting at my desk, wanting
nothing more than to come home
and see you.
(originally published in Statement Magazine, 2023)
I slept beneath the mall for some time
to avoid the burden of capitalism ha!
if I could that would be glorious to
avoid the landlord hey look I am in
the parking garage what garbage
all these ads for movies I do and
do not want to see but I would
not know I did not want to see it
until seeing that is the predicament
I do not have the cash nor the time
to spend paying for rent give me
gunmetal cement walls six floors
beneath the surface where I drive
to where not even bugs venture
there I am unbound
I fly in my dreams
(originally published in Train: a poetry journal, Fall 2022)
at Tessaro’s after a long sunless
January mumblecore weekend
beginning no one to vent to
Pittsburgh bars of cig smoke
without windows I can barely
come up for air in the work
in which we say it all works
out in the end despite wanting
a cigarette having given it
up years ago just to again
(originally published in Nauseated Drive, Winter 2022)
On the job I steal time already
stolen from me. Taxidermied
deer on beige walls. Nature
in a protein bar. Yes,
I am consuming. No,
I am no consumer.
I push hard
but age miserably
among antlers
while day flees
into night flops
into the far future.
My family will
want bouquets
but you’ll know
what to do.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
After I axed past the tree-lined path, I turned
the wrench that opened safes of gold with my own
hand. And then I hired someone with wrists
of a little more tension. I should have
never slept in the bed of wealth. I should have
known, in the night when every dreamer is
dreaming, I would sink deeper into that
endless hole of jagged desire until
I was thrust like from a slingshot
through my roof into a room
of mirrors where I seemed to be me,
but adorned in glimmering garbage.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Winter 2021)
We made Arrested Development-esque chicken imitations
at the restaurant– bakawk, cheep-cheep, wakka wakka–
being young, I thought that was the language of love.
We always laughed across the chasm of the room
when we shut shop, squeezing soap rags into heart buckets,
wiping fresh clear streaks on mahogany tables. I vacuumed
pita crumbs and invisible dust, emptied bags thinking,
perhaps, I was on the verge of vanquishing loneliness,
that I was sprinkling zaatar on a plate of foggy shish
tawook, a taste you might return to.
(originally published in Vagabond City Lit, Spring 2023)
sometimes curtains blocking sunlight
are only ghosts sometimes ghost light
in windows only a brightness beyond
the blue bridge I work beneath only
the bridge will lift us over the Allegheny
only the bridge will float us into the grit
of the city the people I used to know
I don’t know them anymore what is
a bed but unmade sheets soft silk
I must become a bridge to get
myself out of bed in morning sunlight
beyond the ghosts of days
I used to possess I was
a curtain blocking the trajectory
of my own light
(originally published in indicia lit, Spring 2022)
My excuse for a poor score:
the frisbee has teeth. And a mind.
It chose to rebel inside the wind–
I agree, of course, when you say
our food delivery job is temporary.
We have hours before we need
to clock in– an ordinary morning
straddling the Olentangy river.
Any way to get our minds off
routine: when scanning the field
for ticks, I find nothing but
excuses, for never becoming
the suit-and-tie my parents
wanted me to be, my score
well over par, another
wayward toss into the breeze
hopes for clarity on a journey
I know not where will lead.
(originally published in Penmen Review, Fall 2020)
Every time I drive the 28th St. Bridge I always make the joke
to myself– should I really be driving on this?
It’s a paunchy punchline to no one and still I apologize for it–
a comment on the bridge’s chipped green paint and rusted
hinges, the (perceived) rickety short-distance, its creaking (I
don’t hear a thing). How close I’ve been to a laugh, some snicker
into an abyss– I’ve said much worse to people and not apologized,
driving over the strip after a fight with my lover, suspended
in the air a silence like tracking a FedEx truck with a package
you know will reach you but when? That apology– the tethering
between the space of sound, the hum of a hungry engine,
covalence of steel and structure bonding across a void.
(originally published in where is the river, Winter 2021)