When I can’t sleep– after
lifetimes pass me by
(embers of 16-bit reflections.
Silken stars, the spider
lights that moved between)
you refuse the lake
when the lake refused
you, but I find a stack
of outdoor towels,
and I can’t stop
using the phrase.
Can’t start a fire
without seeds blowing
over tall weeds into
mouths of rubber
band bullfrogs (among
ones with sounds a larynx
can’t replicate).
Tomorrow calls for
rain. No one said
you couldn’t leave
the pond until the
bugs did what they
do best: bug you
enough to drag you
out of the water,
your feet enough
in the grass
to walk tonight.
(originally published in Piker Press, Fall 2024)
Nature
Childhood Backyard
Oblivious to the approaching hard-
ships of the road, the sleeping leaves
with years of nourishment wake
with you in your mom’s backyard,
under dark sky and pine boughs.
Those autumn days the wind blew,
singing, but remembering the song
has become too loud. Place your palm
against the bark to soften its voice, cease
the rustling. Come inside now. Walk
through your memories like in a dream.
(originally published in EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2023)
Bro
Get out of my life with
your election signs. Don’t
tell me what stakes
you stuck in your front lawn.
Come on. I know you’re not
a boomer. You say we’re at
a crossroads and I gaze
into the neighbor’s yard–
used to be bushes concealing
every outside path. Now there’s
someone on a lawnmower severing
the bonds of grass, in intervals,
each direction I look, each time
I visit home. And we comment
each new motor makes it harder
to reach each other. Mom’s
neighbors want to beat the rain.
We just built this fire in the back
of my childhood home. These
bundles of sticks my mom gathers,
waiting for us to come home
some early October Saturday.
At my brother’s first mention
of herd immunity, my sister
suggests we seek more kindling
in the tall grass. The air is
parched but we must keep
burning. Firewood left from Dad’s
death we’ve already forgotten.
My brother says we’re gonna
lose all this country fought for–
Dad survived World War II
only to shatter his ribs on a fire
hydrant sixty years later. Mom
would not let the coroner dig
into his carcass for an autopsy.
In his later years, Dad would keep
a hose beside our bonfires. Still,
we hunch over heat together,
burning hot dogs on forgotten
skewers. We dredge the past
again: a year after my father’s death,
cooking hot dogs over walnut husks,
one of you said there could be
an industry for the timbered taste
coating the tenuous meat we’ve
shared over the years.
(originally published in Alternate Route, Spring 2023)
Mechanics of Mundane Things
I have always questioned
the mechanics of mundane
things, such as how
the dishwasher works
or where pants land
in relation to where
I placed them initially
in the washer, but birds,
I never question
how they work. They
have wings and they
flap them, what’s
the problem?
(originally published in The Stray Branch, Fall 2023)
Findley Lake
I have lived long enough
to know to stay
out of the water. Bug guts
a crushed red berry beside
me. If there’s poison off
the dock– weeds in everlasting
web, I have a lot of gnats
to catch along the muddy
path around the pond of singing
birds and bullfrogs leading
the way to Destiny’s house.
(originally published in Roi Faneant, Summer 2022)
For You the Invading Weeds
moss spirit water
air with freshness
unknowing us
capable I understood
how much to lose
beside leaves
wilting off
trees onto grass
to grow anew
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Summer 2021)
A Cockatrice Couple
Watching cardinals by the window, I expect them
to drop dead. But they never. Instead, we keep drinking
bird-themed beers and fly in orbit around each other’s
other lovers, because when we are drunk we call ourselves
a cockatrice couple, the way we span to such great lengths
to say, we’re blooming, there’s nothing wrong, we bloom.
Always, we come down to earth and say we can’t, never
could. When we land in water, our human qualities
return. Can’t withstand
the current.
(originally published in *82 Review, Fall 2022)
Disc Golf
My excuse for a poor score:
the frisbee has teeth. And a mind.
It chose to rebel inside the wind–
I agree, of course, when you say
our food delivery job is temporary.
We have hours before we need
to clock in– an ordinary morning
straddling the Olentangy river.
Any way to get our minds off
routine: when scanning the field
for ticks, I find nothing but
excuses, for never becoming
the suit-and-tie my parents
wanted me to be, my score
well over par, another
wayward toss into the breeze
hopes for clarity on a journey
I know not where will lead.
(originally published in Penmen Review, Fall 2020)
A Morning in Knox, PA – September 2020
can’t risk having you fall in
it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
and lavender cornfields
you would tell me if (I made your) birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close bullfrog leaping into moss
to escape me I get it I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
moths displaced little insects winging away
each further step I take toward the lake
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)
Trajectory
I equate falsities with wheat; groves as tea-
leaves in lands of blue sun. I confuse distance
with fair weather– idols in my mind: the beach
or Joshua trees. Golden fields have I never tilled.
Toiled, yes, in my lugubrious way, driving through
vast swaths of America, pasteurized pastures often
teeming with cows. Thinking of scale, it is
impossible to be upset at mathematics. But
I do aim anger at trajectory. For years I had
my eyes closed, pointed at a spinning globe.
When I opened them, in Mom’s basement,
my feet were planted where I remembered.
(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Summer 2021)