Diffusion / NBA Finals, 2016

Pacing around the bar crowd, watching
the Cavaliers transfer heat to one another through
bullet passes around invisible perimeters, Kurt

and I keep drinking the strangers toward us.
“Gaseous diffusion,” he offers. “Alcohol
is only molecules bumping into each other.”

Our bodies generate more heat with every swig,
the atmosphere tense but warm through
our gullets. We chug chaos in the blur,

invite a thousand basketballs to bounce up
and down halfcourt. The players don’t notice
our dribbled words in soundwaves processed

a million different ways in the space between
earlobe and brain. Endlessly the spectators
chant go to sleep because no one we want

to talk to wants to talk to us, our zigzagged steps
combining with the sound of a team on the verge
of climbing a challenging mountain though

the peak is steep so we try nothing more
but the drinks that keep us moving. To stop
would be to hear the room’s haunting cheer.

 

(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Fall 2018)

Horoscope – May 12, 2017

You generally enjoy your dreams, Taurus,
but not this last one in which your lover
invites her Iowan ex to your house

and they wear your jeans while
you yell at cabinets of lipstick. There
are layers of red on each wall’s face

and you run outside after her
Honda yelling at its exhaust
along cornfields of mid-America.

Meanwhile, in real life, you
two have yet to get in a fight.

Maybe you should do that soon.

 

(originally published in Yes, Poetry, 2017)