I’m in bed an engine revs a motorcycle outside
someone on this street screams slow down
but I finish our pack of blueberries, I apologize
what for? We were both eating them. The small
sour ones. The large C-flat ones. Near the end
I say these kinda taste weird. You say they’re
very sweet. I apologize what for? Where I’m at
I can complain about such sweetness.
(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)
This is a binding between nature and mankind
unexplainable through philosophy. The trees
want to reclaim us or, perhaps, themselves.
-K. Santiago, “The Whispers in the Wild”
World Cup – athletes at their peak
when the affliction struck.
Crushed leaves in snot on tissue –
it’s nothing. I was Ubering people
around Columbus, heard the chatter.
Can trees grow in brains? Is the new
trend snorting deciduous?
I tapped the CNN app– first it was
a world-class saxophonist struck
down with a green cold.
Next, football stars from Paraguay
and Russia, all blowing chunks
of trees into white, softer trees.
The first doctor to log a patient
said it’s nothing to worry about.
After a week the test showed invasion:
prickly pines a long spine in the nose
and the headlines bleated MEAT TREES!
It was early morning in the haze
of dreaming when my nose dripped forest–
I wiped my hand across the stream,
the flecks of blossoms blooming.
(originally published in Cough Syrup Magazine, Spring 2020)
Hands are raw from cheap soap
and scrubbing. We’re jobless now
so here’s the sink full of
better times we’re rinsing.
Let’s rearrange the living
room, drag the couch
from the side wall
to the back wall,
place the coat rack
in a different dusty corner,
treat the TV like
the god it wants to be.
There will be many
forms of worship,
this distancing.
Books. Cooking.
Writing. Pining.
Finally, I have time
to make music
and poetry but
I can’t put my phone
down– notifications
for each cog of society
as it breaks down.
You ask
should we hang
art on the walls?
I ask, what art?
(originally published in American Writers’ Review, Summer 2020)
The people I love have never been further
& I’ve never been so nervous this long
not knowing which of the weeks
will be the one I can leave & be bound
to the beginning I will uncork
this love inside me (ever underground
and rooting) such that crowds will be
willed into existence again. But
we don’t need the shopping mall.
Slabs of pumice stone I saw
inside the consumers. Instead
of bedding the concourse
you asked for an airplane
and received as a gift
a ballot. A bailout for the sky
and everything within:
what’s the origin of acid
in the rain? Surely we couldn’t
be so monstrous. I’ve won a
thousand wars these thirty
years but none like isolation.
I’m feeding into the frenzy
like the marketers want me
to. The markets want me
dead, but still they want
my money.
(originally published in Flashes, Fall 2021)
Like yesterday, I say
I won’t leave the house for
spinach seeds. We have to
make with what we have.
I’m listening to Grizzly Bear,
like yesterday. I say
my favorite song is Two Weeks–
eighth-note piano ends for vocals.
I won’t leave the house for,
at best, two weeks after. But
I can’t live on only singing.
Spinach seeds. We have to.
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2022)
You say today’s a great day
to walk the cemetery.
So we go. And there are
infectious monsters on our
street, monsters crossing
the intersection, monsters
carrying garbage bags,
monsters driving cars
with windows closed,
staring at us, fellow
monsters. And when
we cross the gate
there’s no one
alive around.
Just hills and hills
of headstones–
all of the dead
a responsible
six feet under.
(originally published in Capsule Stories, Spring 2020)
the religiosity of longing
potatoes are my new church
long-lasting water-scrubbed love
in the oven eleven of them
I want you to count
carefully
our time remaining
provided what we want
we really want
is growing underground in vast distant fields
if we could see well enough to count
(originally published in HAD, Winter 2022)
Meditation is mellifluous
melody ignoring the choo-
choo train inside my head,
but I have been growing
better, forth in time.
There are meadows
I will never enter – renter
of everything. Nothing I meet
in this life I keep. Honest. Lover
bearing forever strands
of hair? God, infinity is
so infinite when glimpsed.
Such the rose moon
grows on this
specific sky.
(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)
Today, I slide on slush on my drive. Unplowed roads, slippery odometer–
morning snow surprise. Pittsburgh’s a city of hills unavoidable, and later,
waiting on a grocery pickup, I stare into the rearview mirror at the frost-
tipped pines when a knock on my window removes me from my existential
stupor. I don’t know how to interact anymore. Crank the window the wrong
way. Peppermint mocha, the years past. I bought a latte this morning but did
not know how to order it. The Dunkin teens stared, dumfounded, and it was
a foggy day like this– in which I float through the happenings– that I last
crashed my car. In Los Angeles, I flew down the dry 405, beat after
a long day in a Hollywood studio, and was amazed at the hospital light
brightness as I passed Westwood, like I could snap my fingers and time
would once again resume, while five other lanes of traffic zigged around
me with no regard to my existence. I was like a visitor to myself dragged
back into being with silent smoke pouring out the mouth of my Ford’s
hood. The front was crumpled but the SUV I slammed into appeared
untouched. The sixteen-year-old girl called her dad to ask what to do.
She took my insurance, my number, then drove off with the rest of the
world, as I stood at the side of the highway waiting for someone to
help me go home, still, to this day.
(originally published in the chapbook Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press), Spring 2022)
Home is a little bit blurry.
Mom, I swear to you, it might not be
July next time I see you.
Your digital face is a little bit blurry,
but our lighthouse will always be
the one light in dark through memory,
right? I want to climb the ladder
to surveil the roof. Home has
become a wall of atrophied faces.
(originally published in The Writing Disorder, Summer 2021)