I’m in bed an engine revs a motorcycle outside
someone on this street screams slow down
but I finish our pack of blueberries, I apologize
what for? We were both eating them. The small
sour ones. The large C-flat ones. Near the end
I say these kinda taste weird. You say they’re
very sweet. I apologize what for? Where I’m at
I can complain about such sweetness.
(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)
She has a voice that could reach the stars, a friend said,
so I took a stethoscope to the atmosphere and listened
for a heartbeat to fill my ears & when it did I burst
into flame & catapulted through darkness in ever
-wandering light
(originally published in Goat’s Milk Magazine, Spring 2020)
Like yesterday, I say
I won’t leave the house for
spinach seeds. We have to
make with what we have.
I’m listening to Grizzly Bear,
like yesterday. I say
my favorite song is Two Weeks–
eighth-note piano ends for vocals.
I won’t leave the house for,
at best, two weeks after. But
I can’t live on only singing.
Spinach seeds. We have to.
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2022)
Meditation is mellifluous
melody ignoring the choo-
choo train inside my head,
but I have been growing
better, forth in time.
There are meadows
I will never enter – renter
of everything. Nothing I meet
in this life I keep. Honest. Lover
bearing forever strands
of hair? God, infinity is
so infinite when glimpsed.
Such the rose moon
grows on this
specific sky.
(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)
The guitar hides from the sun– a shadow
of someone familiar singing. To bare my snake
skin wrapped around this temporary home.
Green of smile. Holes of jeans. Sweat
of beetles. Let me keep a tambourine
nearby. I want to make sound in the spotlight.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Fall 2020)
“I was born blown-minded
with an eye on oblivion.”
–Young Galaxy
I’ve been sitting at my desk,
no artistic talent, drawing
a primate, the universe,
a fetus, a circus, and
with each I realize I’m
just drawing myself
over and over again–
hurtling through space
and time in my muddled
mind to conclude I don’t
know shit. So all these
lines connect where?
I don’t know whether
I’m looking to God
or to get laid. It’s both
the same, really, accessing
the part of the brain that
activates to a higher calling.
Whether that’s the faith
that I exist right now!
Or I must reproduce!
doesn’t matter.
I am a goddamn mess
made of star matter
and the more I try to
laser-focus my brain
at understanding,
the more I learn
there’s nothing
there. I feel as empty
between my ears
as the space between
Earth and the moon,
but then I learn that
all of the planets
in the solar system
can fit in the distance
between those bodies?
Gray matter.
(originally published in Cacti Fur, Winter 2019)
Head is hard wood, paint and brush
stroke, linens in the lighthouse, light
without threat of darkness or vice versa,
a grayscale version of a tremolo, where
everything acrylic includes your apathy.
Painting nothing / city / boat I raise
my hands in the air to weather the storm.
(originally published in Dreich Magazine, Summer 2021)
& here in my convulsions, inside my Catholic upbringing,
the blue blanket of childhood– an introduction to sexuality–
I thought I’d turn into a pillar of salt. That God Himself
would descend, golden baritone, with his judgment fist.
But it was high school and I knew nothing of Hebrew,
despite forced classes studying the Old Testament and New,
both being death knells until the ringing bell of class-
change. Stranded in the hallways of youth the orange sky
unending. And I’d chant to myself in my bedroom, horny
and hungry, for a shared stereo. To speak common language
with underlying thread. An undying. That I could stay lost
in the map of Star’s music and be worthy of sexuality, too.
(originally published in Carpe Bloom, Winter 2019)
Again, a rainbow sprouting from your violin–
no, it’s no light. You never wanted to mother.
Music was the way– adagios hanging from
the clouds. But God had something in store–
come on.
What happened was we were drinking herbal tea
and you told me of new pregnancy within these
silent walls of our favorite coffee shop and I said
I’m sorry, I’m sorry because I didn’t know what
else to. And you said it’s okay, it wasn’t you, just
I had to tell someone. Because you no longer
write symphonies. The instrument collects dust in
your closet– where’s the music? We ask. You
answer: inside, swelling. If there’s one thing
you must hear, she will be a cadenza.
(originally published in Chiron Review, Fall 2020)
Always having a crush
makes life fun. The pining,
as Vonnegut preached, even
if only for a glass of water.
It was in the parking lot, dark
after shutting the trunk where
we stored your viola. You
hugged me, whispered music.
Your warmth pressed against
mine– epiphany. A concerto
we don’t know the notes to. How
do you shut the trunk to a partner
you’ve stored your notes in for
a decade? I see the complacency.
The spare tire in reach. Our palms
touched each time we switched
our beers. It’s true: one of us will
move soon, and I want to whisper
give me a reason not to.
(originally published in bluepepper, Fall 2019)