On one of our nightly walks
of less and less talk,
gunshots punctuate the air,
puncturing our silence.
I hold my palms over your ears
when an ambulance passes us,
its siren shrieking into our void,
lights turning us red
like there’s any lust left.
(originally published in The Blotter Magazine, Summer 2017)
Since I first saw your face
shine from a stage and again
in desert sun and through cool,
desert night, you always felt right.
We are soaked now in swimming
pools and sands pooled near
the coastline’s swaying smile
that thrums for us; and here,
water kissing submerged feet
anchored in each other.
(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2017)
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)
When there’s nothing special about a sunset
lined with palms, there is nothing special.
Trees jut from behind roofs
like green skinny beanstalks extended forever.
Every plane a UFO.
Breathe the collective breaths of everyone.
Walks should be alone,
watching crows circle majestically
above stacks of garbage
bags in shopping carts.
Soon there are words:
first a sweeping hush,
a low hum.
Then the revving of neighbors
and their chatty sportscars.
The emissions enter the brain.
Then the atmosphere.
Whatever that is
is not what I am looking for.
(originally published in The Quotable – 2015)
the not-even-mine salt-and-pepper pup
domesticates me
the longer i hang
the more chameleon my intentions
the smell of sweat from rain-pawed feet
i wave yesterday’s socks
like american flags
i say, speak english –
even though i do not understand
(originally published in White Stag – Volume II, Issue I)
there are many flowers come across paths
alongside apartments but nonesuch like the
hyacinth rose wrapped tightly as such stands
outside a tiny market in view of black-grim
graffiti reading with a smile worth at least fifty
fifty-cent avocados because spring lays beyond
the peel of skin like waking up to jumbled
white sheets with the knowing of presence past
white walls hanged with stationary song which
would sing if only strings could strum themselves
(originally published in The Bitter Oleander, Spring 2015)