in the vacant living room
our packed boxes never touched,
black mold assumes the ceiling fan.
it awakens every morning
wanting to spin,
to slice into the air
with its fine blades
a surgery of breathing
and the chest waits
for your steady palm
to resuscitate
those numb nights,
when our billowed heat
cooled our voluminous bits
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review)
Every road has a finite end, just mud and sky, daytime
if you’re lucky, night looming beyond the paling horizon.
Maybe there is a barren tree, branches dancing
to a slow sonata, a love song only the two of you
know, the earth calmly listening. If you can plant
your naked feet into the ground, you will hear
the earth hum as it spins faster than you will ever
move, and though it always seems like stasis, you hope
it never stops, remains a puzzle
merely a misstep from disarray.
(originally featured in Common Ground Review, Vol. XVII, Issue II)
Paradise is worse than this. I’ve pissed
in the golden streets of Beverly Hills.
The stars depart their private cabs,
shoes on the ground. I’ve pissed in beach sand
with the waterbirds, the full balloon
at sunrise, wind swaying. The neighborhood
has my back. I spit fish fluoride
into grass. Splotches of next-day death
in circles brown and black. Windows fog. Yeah
I’m an airplane in a cloud. Should’ve wrapped that scarf
around my neck until my head fell off. The night is
a broken refrigerator, top shelf. Tell that to the rotting
trunk sushi. Still, some spiders creep through cracks and
keep the feet and urine smells out. Bent to a backseat
sockball and time is an envelope I hand to a stranger.
How his home stinks of sweat and mildew
and old Havarti. Fiona has crank windows
and that new car smell and floating dust.
I can’t spit enough. Blame it on the vermouth.
In the morning, I floss my coal moon fingernails
with flamenco strings. Neighbors run
past but who needs pants.
Say hello to the father and his
baby in the stroller. Say hello
to the fleshy whites. Say
hello to everlasting days
of luxury where the days
don’t end, the nights never
end, again and again
the fishing rod window
cranks, to invited crows–
the feasts of mud– say
hello and wave and caw.
(originally published in Prong & Posy, Issue 2)
Your limb fingers pressed
on the stairway keyboard,
wanna see you move like
you used to, feel your breath
close to mine in new places, say
the same words we said, even if
it was a stupid Sunday,
hear the words,
hear them again, pink erase
the drinks
and listen, hear the words
in my head, I want to feel
the air shake again electric,
the clacking marimbas, I want
your fingers, all of them, pressed
again like whispers
I like to explore,
want the minor chords
out of my head, want your blonde hair
in the ridges between my teeth,
strands in my curled tongue,
tell me what the stars are like
in your own words,
want to hear them,
want to hear their twinkle
in your voice
(Originally published in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Issue Forty-One)
Did we learn ourselves from the mirror
after we studied constellations
in ragged almanacs… we rotated mechanical
with a hiss of the so-slow
slowing axis…
No equation… can yet rebirth
a cooling star’s impending supernova
If the family cello were given to you
as it recovered from basement dust…
the bowstring part of me
moves… without asking
to the crescendo of ripples…
and F-minor weeping, the lake
awake not as often at night
the big bang must have stemmed… from a desert string
nervous tremolo through the ages, expanding
like a lung just before that first breath–
whole note for the endless meter…
(originally published in 99 Pine Street)
You wanted to eat my face
just as seven A.M. south Oregon fog
conceals trees over a low valley.
I wanted the same of yours.
What you liked was the sky descended:
how you’re able to grip, fleetingly,
the mortal, shifting clouds–
to think, I have touched the untouchable.
Many pines, from a distance, can be held
by two fingers. We can choose to let them dangle
or hold
steady, steady…
The fog consumes and rises
while we watch the sun burn slowly west.
When the rain begins,
the soft pattering against the windshield
mimics the sound of your jaw
fake-chomping my cheeks–
nearly-inaudible clicks.
The speedometer oscillates
between sixty-five and ninety.
The hillsides change so suddenly
with every mile– shifting smiles hidden
by a fog you know will also fade.
(originally published in VAYAVYA)
*Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Writing Knights Press in 2017
the living room drones and mumbles.
the bone dove sings a petrified song
above the tree, nearly silent enough
to believe a resurrection could occur
in the coming days. pass the stocking
with the kidney stone. bring
the anesthetic. we will drink–
this is the blood bond, the calm,
the thin slicing of ham: bloodless
& calm, torn red wrapping paper
strewn about the room
(originally published in Whale Road Review, December 2015)
boys who would be future men
squealed at new Pokemon.
mimicked moves, karate'd birds
flapping and winging and flinging
OVER NINE THOUSAND!
miles per hour
and things
eight-dollar K-B Toys
always break
blue mega man
onto metal bunk
bed swung
CLANKCLUNK
sprints'a from kitchen, lotsa surge,
hi-ye-ho bullet train
small-scale rail
the basement
digging
digging through purple bin
TREASURE! TREASURE!
homemade pogs; on one side
the cut-out cartoons
from game manuals, Zero so cool
his long blonde hair, red armor
give me his sword no
it's mine
x-buster
circular cutting
rise to heroes controlled
control was so easy
yes, yes, think of life–
death in digital terms
those boys were the masters then
the future men and their
cold basement summers
(originally published in Suburban Diaspora)
The spokes on the wheels
spoke of hyperspace tunnels
we could fall into forever
suspended in orbits
circling, circling.
We spoke of forever,
how short that is.
Spoke porcelain
bowls smoked joints
made points
in German accent jokes.
Spoke grass tones.
Spoke of bed
dreams of bed
in red made-up languages
we woke we spoke we
never learned we
joked we hoped we spoke
our smokes I watched
you smoke we
sucked lips
(turpentine kissed)
all that time we
spoke smoke we
don’t speak of that now
(originally published in Beechwood Review – July 2015)
