Your laugh could knock civilization out
but you are too modest.
I spent time at the cafeteria alone
at school. Red trays quivered.
On film sets I can’t look up.
How tight is the lighting rig?
When I apply that logic
to our place in the universe–
it’s too cold a stone to live alone.
When your soundwaves reach me,
in my solace, from the moon
or Mars or Mars, Pennsylvania,
I want my life to begin again
and I want you there
the whole time.
(originally published in Ephemeral Elegies, Spring 2023)
Whenever I meet a person
I like to think there is
a string tethered between us.
Not a cobweb or rough
rope but a violin, or a cascade
of violins, the song within you
within each person, too. I see
you in this coffee shop across
the block; thus, we are connected,
intertwined forever whether you
go to the space station or not
and I am stuck in Akron,
cursing God as ground-
dwellers do. Inhabitant of the heart–
in this world of small worlds,
this blue sunken sea I’m clung
to you at its depths, you cling
to me with the urchins
on your shirt, the breath
in your lungs my own,
each molecule moving
the way we together move.
(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)