Lawnmower string / guitar heart–
pull, strum, start then stop the song.
It’s dead grass. Its broken neck.
B-chord specks. Shades of saffron.
It’s dandelion season–
one reason to sing with blades.
Grass frets yet begins anew.
Rotors drone through spring. Charades.
(originally published in The Road Not Taken, Summer 2016)
and the tide comes and goes like my foot in and out of the water lowering the gate to oblivion i hold your hand in highest regard in the pantheon we were regal all the modern day utensils utilized today a kind of balled rain if you can hold it without it dissipating you are the master of the clouds a red ladder leading to the top of mount everest where one will never rest among the cozy mattresses i almost assign an acadian victory holding loose the lips of passion and allowing everyone roam free
and the castle moat which floats in some space between imagination and fantasy holds to the gabardine moon just a flick of the lighter away on some space runway eternal light rushing some unmatchable beauty is found in the absence of all other light some unimaginable thing the first time you experience sunshine after birth your first kiss at a high school dance the music swaying both of you two mouths pressed against each other full of the moon like some wakeful sleep how it is as memory
(initially published in an alternate form in The Open Mouse)
Tambourines shook to bodies
clicking in uncertainty, heartbeats
in heart surgery, incisions in conjunction
with each step, hoping motion gives meaning
to life, the idea of it, discordant
on the shivering nape of a neck,
two shadows in a drumbeat
singing themselves a song.
(originally published in Icarus Down Review, March 2016)
The trees are dead, she said.
Peering outside, it was true:
A still-barren sixty degrees, sun
meekly reveling in its new warm.
A week ago, our mother cut down the tree
we picked apples from as children.
They were small, red, never delicious–
brown and burrowed with worms
because anything sweet from the skin
isn’t as sweet as you might think.
All those colorful lights we tied around
the necks of plastic and decoration,
the way we choked the holiday,
wrung out the last ounces of life
from the animal ornaments on every pine.
The walrus with the broken tusk.
The hyena whose laugh can nearly
be heard. As if anthropomorphizing could
ever atone for the past but I would love
to believe in a world where a fragment of
a tusk means something is truly missing–
perhaps rickety laughter ringing through
thin walls, dominant as the wooden organ
moans his mantra: everything in this world
is connected. Not every connected thing
is aware of its living, its connection.
But the way fingers dance deep
resonance out of the organ’s shifty teeth
to provide holiness for the changed house
is the gift we must open for ourselves
with our hands full of music– a sourness
in harmony, an ode to shriveled apples.
(originally published in Flatbush Review, Winter 2016)
(originally published in November Bees, Summer 2016)
the violin’s larynx
the night’s wind
the notes’ closed throats
fingers taut on string
(originally published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal)
In Spain I did love and adore you. I did.
But in Spain, it is easy to love and adore anything–
the paella, her rabbit flesh and beans;
even the sidewalk– acera.
With her language an aphrodisiac,
you do not wonder why you fall, or sustain, in love.
We spoke our ugly language around beautiful tongues
which filled the air with matrimonial vows.
In the beginning, we were the sound of stars, the language
of kisses. I can fall in love with anything skybound
and I do.
Those moon-colored nights were our yesterdays,
and tomorrow we return to our familiar,
where love is not wordless
nor as easily presumed.
(originally published in Memoryhouse, Spring 2016)
In kindergarten, I sketched a vagina as a circle
lost in strands of hair, similar to a scribbled sun.
The inklings of want would soon
set sail. When I showed the drawing
to my mother, she somehow knew what it was.
Her suspicious eye taught me life is the pursuit
of the scribbled sun. The first time I drove a car alone,
zooming up the hill toward the highway, I took pictures
of the sunset without watching the road, as if heaven
could be captured with my own fingers. At sixteen
I stole Snickers bars at my first job. The dollar store
went under. It could have been worse. I told the priest
maybe God thinks I touch myself improperly.
He said to toss the dirty magazines, meaning
I didn’t change a thing. In marching band, I pressed
my mouth against the trombone’s silver mouthpiece
and kissed when I blew, spit coursing through the instrument’s body
until it dripped onto the checkered floor. I didn’t lose my virginity
too early. By then it was too late. I have seen the L.A. River
rub itself dry beneath the metal bridges, withered and silent,
while the ocean wets perpetual sand, and all I could do
was run my fingers through the tide’s receding hair.
In seventh grade the school librarian declared if anyone
in class could finish A Tale of Two Cities, it was me.
I did not finish. I was twelve and mastering arousal,
turning pages with fingers on thighs inside of skirts,
skulking my hand up to God, to the first time
I knew sanctity– and the feeling, unlike faith,
was enough to make me believe.
(originally published in Corium Magazine, Spring 2016)
I run from exceptional red.
Distance. Majestic arches. Loop-
de-loop of common want. Canyons,
or peace of mind. Say Zen. Say
Zion. Watch as wind-up forests
spiral from sand. Leaves whisper
to their coming branches in the vacant
hinge of a song. Don’t they
still reach for you. The lonely hoodoos
eroded in failed embrace. Treble clef,
or trouble. No beats for the metered dream.
(originally published in Turk’s Head Review – October 2015)
