Nothing to start conversation with
but the glow of television, hors d’oeuvres
the crowd devoured and I could only stand
and gape at the electric wiring strung along
the ceiling that led to the hanging light
fixture, a metallic apple dimmed. I wanted
to talk about architecture but felt wildly
inadequate due to the bricks missing
in my brain, hammers clanking where
words should, my mouth full of nails.
(originally published in Poetry Super Highway, Summer 2020)
that was the monochrome new year
I reached for your leg like a frog with long
tongue and you were on
the couch flyswatting everyone
the walls were drunk too the way
we behaved in the wild dorms
animals celebrating the turn of a page
the setting of the sun it was winter
in Berea and we held each other
like it would never be warm
again we caught snowflakes on
our tongues left black bottles in dead grass
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
this is no end
nor beginning
I climb into the clock
and hairs of time still
wend from its beating
wings until purpose
finds me this is just
another way to kill time
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Fall 2021)
the simulation is: the universe
is a metronome
ticking
away at the (nothing)
real estate
it has yet to consume
reality
gaslights us to
upsell individual importance
because I (want to) believe
my atoms are unique
scrambled
in such a way
that if I slip
on ice
& crack my head
on concrete
the universe won’t recycle me
it will just begin again
(originally published in Remington Review, Summer 2019)
The phone rings a silent coil around
the kitchen; the houseplants drink Coca-Cola
and rum. Some day soon your lover will leave
is already a dust mote dancing in the sunbeam
through your window. Carl Sagan writes from
the after-universe a love letter to the abyss and
attaches a minuet bouquet with an I’m sorry note.
How to apologize to whom we love when we are living–
rain sobs off the gutter, shrieks down city drains.
She doesn’t trust you anymore, and you didn’t come
back last night to feed your dog who cried alone in
the darkness of your home, but still he wagged his tail
in the presence of your uncertain return.
(originally published in Columbia Journal Online, Winter 2018)
I do not perceive you as obsessed with death
even if, days before, our jovial talks of dying
led to sugar-frosted blue wondering at the sky.
We planned to pop champagne for the birth
of feeling alive: winter hardens soil so we must dig
to the laughter we share in our spines.
We did not drink white wine, but the beer was breath
without knowing the scent– like any year,
we were paintings of light and dark, of limb
and bone so disordered to stand is a triumph,
and hope is a kaleidoscope, a conjecture.
Each dying wave returns, even at the frayed edge
of memory, how the dead are lavish with flowers
and stories. Still, we press on to uncork
our champagne future: drafts of breath in each
new year, dead waves haunting the mortal tide
with no specific beginning, no obvious end.
(originally published in Liquid Imagination, Summer 2016)