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)
Metal and salt in my mouth
wondering at the biological sky
how the clouds would fit into my sockets.
I process love like rain: I stay inside
steel darkness and wait for it to pass,
my circuits sugarwater
and missed connection.
(originally published in 1001 Journal, Spring 2017)
Often I find myself wanting to move
from the dust like a lost, small dog,
fur a summertime shackle.
Those dark winter days
we were our own light.
Lapped the water in from a trough.
We didn’t have to dip (not deeply)
and we’d share our sips freely.
Then Valentine’s Day
came and went.
Meanwhile we sat alone
at our computers,
waiting to press send.
(originally published in The Legendary)
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)