When my father retired, he could not end
the work– sunrise blurred to sunset
sculpting trees within the canvas of our yard.
Soon, he said, you will wear my work
on your hands. But after he passed, my hands
would tremble leaning ladder onto tree,
snipping branches off the living
limbs.
(originally published in U-Rights Magazine, Fall 2020)
last night I slept in your bed
white sheets disheveled
I plucked an orange scrunchie
off your pillow and placed it
on the dresser
drawers half-open
like an uneven staircase
dresses streaming out
onto the floor
like contrails
frozen
mid-destination
(originally published in In Parentheses, Spring 2020)
before you
moved
to Chicago
we lit a flame
with bugspray
loud as strangers
but the bonfire
burning out back
is your voice
haunting
the smoke
in this house
(originally published in Goat’s Milk Magazine, Spring 2020)
eye contact
with a dead deer
on the side of the highway
his eyes were open
facing oncoming traffic
neither happy nor sad
just dead
face intact
a mangled cute
because I don’t find deer
particularly cute
nor useful when alive
(here I am
another man
valuing appearance
as commodity)
but I don’t want
to kill them
I am on my way
to see my underpaid
overworked partner
on memorial day
passing cop
after waiting
cop
and I swear
there are
more carcasses
than usual
in the tall grass
(originally published in In Parentheses, Spring 2020)
and I am on fire too ready
to burn Panera down
no one really wants this hospital
food its chemicals inside
that make it breathe the bread
is moving if you watch
close enough its heartbeat
in your mouth we are all on
fire this former dead living
animal a baguette string inside
my intestines there are wings
in my salad flapping dead cells
floating and all I can do is be
the sun and burn the whole world
then flush my throat with water
(originally published in Madness Muse Press, Fall 2020)
Without destination, I am powerless
behind a Civic’s bumper. The cars on 315–
straight shot viewable from my window–
travel without obstruction. In the Prius
beside me is a couple wrapped around
each other during meaningless red light.
The world is ending in these fumes and
still, I have been staring at this Wendy’s
sign, fantasizing about my lips on
a burger square, biting into processed
buns, cramming my mouth with fingers of
fries, then watching the sky turn jaundice.
(originally published in Corvus Review, Winter 2022)
I want to sketch surroundings
in my skull they are skeletons
each day dustwhite percussion
bleating purple ears forgetting
shapes faces family landscape
manicured blood lawn of bone
dry cocktails to leash legacy
within brick pen of a home
we call distance inside air
conditioned repainted longing
to be where you are inside
construction green architects
will lose the blueprint to
(originally published in former People, Winter 2020)
among the blue desks was a meager
audition for adulthood crumpled
into a mess of wooden shadows reciting
barbell lines on the film school second
floor (stair steps closer to Orion) how
I was dreaming young of the world’s
grand magnanimousness suffused
with balloons that smelled of palm frond
everglades my school-sanctioned camera
would record the nightglow trees by lights
of Coe Lake where it snowed pine cones
in the backyard of my mother’s house
where acres stretch forever rugs of green grass
and hunger the endless hunger for somewhere
anywhere else
(originally published in KGB Bar Lit Mag, Spring 2021)
between you both are more Picasso
Pollack than Leibovitz however
much I disengage the Oculus will never
be Pennsylvania though I have advanced
technology in my pocket (I still have
the broken faces we captured) I seek
the thin thread between real what
I wish to be real where I want to go
if time ever bends into black hole
I’ll head back home to Ohio and give
a hug to everyone I somehow love
as an alarm or Chekhov’s gun
telling you are the people I still love
in the future you will reassemble into
magazine collage and still resemble
the hummus-stained server in 2012
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2020)
I need this walk through the suburbs
summer heat has me a certain way
lovers have me a certain way
I need to clear my head with the zen
of weedwackers droning, an SUV’s blur and
whoosh, lawnmowers torturing the grass–
white noise, white birds, white hybrids.
walked with white sneakers in the mud
last night drunk in the rain through an alley
(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)