if
there’s
a
slice
of
tomato
stuck
to
the
wall
use
your
tongue
as
a
forklift
to
catapult
it
onto
mine
(originally published in Rabid Oak, Summer 2019)
minimalist
At the Edge
There is no sea
Beautiful silver
chrysanthemum
wine crystal
(originally published in Total Eclipse, Summer 2019)
Dry Lips
the stream
parched
the heart
lips
the lung
lips
the light
dark
the night
parched
the night
lips
the lung
dark
the stream
heart
the lips
heart
the heart
always
parched
(originally published in Off the Coast, Fall 2017)
Smartphones
Want
led us
to this
world
of cameras
in palms
capturing
the world
without
knowing it.
(originally published in Gambling the Aisle, Summer 2017)
Poetry Workshop
hang
words
let everything
unnecessary
die
(originally published in minor literature[s], Summer 2017)
Flotation Tank
close your eyes,
so you forget.
or remember.
whichever submersion
buries deeper
the salt within you.
it is only you afloat,
naked in the darkest night.
your body is a dream sailing
a sea of decomposing dreams,
patches of brown grass
underneath the auburn leaves.
release what you can touch,
especially if it is nothing.
by then it should not matter
if your eyes stay closed.
when they open, find comfort
in what you cannot see.
(originally published in Skylark Review, Fall 2016)
Golden Gate
I listened, during that foggy morning stroll
on the Golden Gate, when you alluded
to what it must mean to jump,
how it must feel to fall.
The foghorn blared every five minutes
from some ship we could not find beneath us.
We peered our heads over the low railing
and inhaled the gray.
Red telephones rang in our heads.
I can still hear the ringing
from the hotel’s broken phone–
thin wires dangled into lines
on our palms, curved and infinite–
an atlas to guide the whispers
we cupped into our hands
at night.
I feared faraway screams
or the deafening sound of cymbals, shards
of metal launched from the hinges
of what was thought secure–
I did not expect
in an instant, without percussion–
I did not expect the fog, how sterile
it seems, like the afterlife, how it turns
the familiar into silhouettes–
to make this any easier.
(originally published in riverbabble, Issue #28, Winter 2016)
“I Wish I Knew How to Quit You,” Says the Moon
We know it is us
who wish to quit the moon.
We close our eyes our jaggedness
could drive the sun away but never
in the way our metaphors could.
Still we write the moonlight
into the sand and growl
at the tide
and again
when the tide returns.
We cry from the shape
our lives took to intersect–
an hourglass
filled with sugar,
or a snail. Or a million
hourglasses, a million snails,
a million glimmering shells
in a measured slowness.
You were talking about the sunrise–
but I never wanted to look.
(originally published in Thin Air, Spring 2016)
Hoverer
drilling holes in the white wall
to repair the rest of the world
workshirts feed clocks’ hands
ticking forever
circular splash of rosewood paint
wound of silence spent
the loud city
will not silence me
(originally published in Eunoia Review, February 2016)
Diamond-Shaped Boxes
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)