Write what
you know,
they say.
From graduating
college, I learned
how to survive
bars
then crashed
into Mom’s
garage drunk
with the GPA of
zero-point-oh-to-
be-young-again-
oh-Lord-oh-my-
oh-fuck
(originally published in SOFT CARTEL, 2018)
in no other place does the sun
swindle the breath from your skin
those who walk in the neon glow
cut the chords of their own harps
your tired shoes crush cans
among mountain-ascending
penny-win dings &
skipped softness
of losses
listen to the suspended string
how she gently falls
to wine
(originally published in SOFT CARTEL, 2018)
Here, we
are a law.
Lawyers of alloy &
beaming far off.
This galaxy lazy
noise & heartbeat.
Hash & shadow,
hair & gold.
Skin, its own
constitution.
Freckles rumina-
ting speckles.
Sunshine the gift &
a Sistine visit.
Angels mistaking
mouths for wings.
I thought you wanted
something like this.
(originally published in Botticelli Magazine, Spring 2018)
The mossy green– temporary escape.
Rustled leaves– this unkempt half-space.
The oak– an institution.
My faith in marriage drops deeper
and deeper into a canyon
of dirty plasma. It ghosts
and snakes away, blunges
expectations into a bent-
arrow half-
reality.
(originally published in Furtive Dalliance, Winter 2018)
Street sweeping
happens irregularly
around here. Every
three months then
you forget about it.
I’ve been off and on in love
with my roommate since the
day she moved in. November
rain, the red-bricked road,
I look out my window–
no cars on the side
of the street I parked on.
I scramble from my room,
her boyfriend in the hallway,
and I yell street cleaning!
His eyes bug up
and we race down
stairs to beat the tow
trucks but I open the door
to see cars parked around mine.
I tell him I’m going anyway
to check the signs–
which I do in my blue
flip-flops, waddling out into
wet grass to find
next week’s the sweeping–
and don’t we always
wait yet another week
to cleanse ourselves of what
we fear we don’t need?
A bad job
or incompatible lover.
For months they have fought
about necessary changes
neither of them will make,
and just last week
she told me
the cycle of her life
goes in years by threes.
The job, the lover,
the house, the dust.
There’s a chill. I’m not wearing
a jacket, so I go back inside
and tell him it’s next week–
but he’s known this for weeks.
(originally published in Columbia Journal Online, Winter 2018)
Relics melt– ardent wisps millions
may they drip. Desert echoes– voices
through throats, landscapes for wing-
spans, sand blown past the horizon.
(originally published in Reality Hands, Winter 2018)
Ancient gods rain fire into
winter’s mythological mitt.
Inhabitants escape from the
tampered breaches to become
apprentices of harmony and
tell of wondrous kings–
the bestiary a cephalopod
might preach. Tell me
less of spirit, more of
body. Tell me hunger.
Tell me deserts, dry
open mouths.
(originally published in Amethyst, Winter 2018)
The busiest road in Columbus is an obstacle course: orange cones
and road closeds (open to local traffic only). Here, in the heart
of Ohio, we build by tearing down. A red crane leaps and a small
business closes, resurrects as Target– bullseye– the suit, the lipstick.
Soon you, too, will not be able to afford to live here. The remodeled
library is threatened by the bones across the street: a nine-story
building in the midst of construction. Wind whips plastic
bags that hang from its scaffolds and I see the ghost–
the restaurant in its wake. Dark clouds
gather above, knowing they, too, have displaced.
(originally published in Literary Orphans, 2018)
The taco meat I seasoned
gets drier by the day. I add ghost
pepper though I do not do well
with high spice. I have no self-
control– four, five, six tacos
at a time– dry beef, cheddar,
heat– the ghost eventually
haunts, tongue in flames.
Last week I drank Long Islands
with a former lover and ended
in a park of hills at 2 A.M.
I lost my glasses in the grass,
but she called me baby one last
time. Everything was blurry, dark,
when I kissed her goodbye
in her apartment, slept in my bed
to the whir of the ceiling fan.
The next morning I called
my girlfriend, told her I loved her
but the words burnt my tongue.
(originally published in taxicab magazine, 2018)
I awaken on a cold-coiled spring
day in which the car won’t stop
spitting fumes into mouths this steering
wheel won’t budge any way but forward
though we veer to the side past white center
line on highway under full moon to fill
our gas tanks with flowers found in eyes
fluttering in wind right when I say
I love you this time I mean it
(originally published in Epigraph Magazine, Winter 2018)