A Sustained Sound of Longing

My heart– a poem, a bass line audible
in Cleveland. You’re in the Heights now,
further away than ever, but it’s fine. I left

you first & felt a sapphire tinge in every
step. How always we wrapped
our bodies in caution tape

tangled in each other anyway.
I couldn’t drive a straight line,
couldn’t speak without stumbling

into potholes leapfrogging the walk
to your apartment on North High.
Inside, your dog was on a leash,

wagging his tail at a ghost
he could not know.

(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)

Alley Walk Into the Dark Park

ambled through snow to my bowl of ice

my calloused tongue on her cold
the bowl’s organ

shriveled
I was a white door
textured and crumbling
in that manticorean dumpster

buds of teeth and name
the mane
where that doorknob would have been

the park on a picnic
her triangular table limbs

white oaks unhinged

the thunderstorm
and her cold drooping javelin wings

(originally published in Peculiar Mormyrid)

You always have to run.

Short North to downtown,
city to city, Indiana

to Tennessee–
one shoe on gravel,

the other careening
through time and space

into a green
where you are unknown

and your running shoes are empty
at our red swing’s feet.

I know you never run to leave,
driving your horizon eyes

miles to sun– and you, after its setting,
glide beside each highway’s unlit rivers

on the bridge of the median, drunk
from driving so long under moon,

far from where our empty bottles
collect in a skyward infinity,

a mountain of clinking memories–
a marathon, a gap traversed quickly.

(originally published in VerseWrights)