In darkness we find a train:
engine active, body inert.
We walk the adjacent rail’s
delineated steel, waiting for a sign.
A spotlight from the city’s purple heart
shoots starward into clear, and the train
barks at something we cannot hear.
We scamper through the brush,
our clothes and hair full of sticks–
strays rising into the cold shadow
of a home, on the hunt
for what will make us whole.
(originally published in The Piedmont Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Winter 2017)
The warehouse art gallery could never be mistaken for the beach,
even as curators charade sand across the dancefloor,
make us remember desire. Violins strike the throbbing air
with an electronic pulse, a horsehoof beat activating
the summer IPAs we drank beforehand to create
our summer selves. It ends. You end. At home later on
we watch documentaries where owls hunt forests for prey.
I pray we will soar but never hungry above branches.
Mostly I pray for our hearts to not be plucked raw, how stranded
and helpless we can feel in a new town while the world whirls
a thousand miles per hour– we stumble through sliding landscapes–
sand on concrete wails for sun, for sunset wind to whip
through industrial, unfinished interiors. We dance, or run,
until light draws herself from the ocean’s muted stone.
(originally published in Crack the Spine, Winter 2016)
We stare at stars until we feel
the cavalcade of stones shift beneath our shoes.
There is an entropy to the universe.
What melody does the rail hold in her ivories?
Do we listen for an engine to ignite
while we tangle in the grass, in the cold,
in the tremble of tracks? Where else to go?
We tremble, too, waiting
for a song from the vulnerable rail
and her sharp of distance.
If the train will not move I still want
to create landscapes with you
and callous ourselves hurtling
past engine content in her still
into worlds where I become wind,
and you, fire–
with a palm on your cheek,
we’re the mountains,
playas, beaches, moors.
All a blur. A quiver.
(originally published in Isthmus, Winter 2016)