I am worried about the return
to normalcy the work of going
to work the work is what I am
doing what capitalists want
is your drive to drive x miles
with a red container of gas that
fuels us bright limitless stars
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
This fixture you forgot
on your back patio.
You say you are confused–
how did that turn on? It has
been months since I last visited.
I say the light is a metaphor
for our friendship. Big plants
sit in chairs in your brown-fenced
garden. Don’t know how close
to be anymore. Never get too close.
A tomato vine peeks from a planter
above you. Gardening’s a hobby,
inching toward the thirty you fear.
An August birthday during the lost
summer and you toss a squeaky
blue ball in my general direction,
more wildly as the night goes on,
and Lola retrieves it every time.
You say she slept upstairs with
you for the first time. We joke
she didn’t fall immediately, that you
had to tell her to turn the television
off, stamp her cigarette out. With our masks,
I only see your eyes smile. I hope you notice
mine. It is dark, as it has been for months,
and we try to stay illuminated, despite
these killer particles suspended
somewhere in the talk between us.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Summer 2023)
(originally published in BlazeVOX Journal, Spring 2023)
I dive into a fresh pool of shining glass–
who wants to spend their years with me?
The new-city-me screams its lungs out for
you. Looking to the past, I fall in love
again. I’ll be promiscuous when
unemployed. I can’t face life
pursuing absolute perfection. Maybe
I will soften my hair, finally. My cat
may not be into this. We lay sideways
in a beam of sun on dust-layered carpet,
moving our eyes to the wall’s tricks of light.
(originally published in Count Seeds With Me [Ethel Zine and Micro-Press], Spring 2022)
All this nesting leaves me
exhausted. When you awaken
I am too tired to live. One day
the hawk will know this. Sunrise,
the same tender air of earth to feed
new omens. The day a hill
between thunderstorms and ruddy
sunsets, with water neither
ephemeral nor potable.
Quartz trembles and falls
into my mouth. Words
say whatever is in them;
they always fall. A cowbird
on a branch sends out her scent.
(I realize these rocks are symbolic,
a character for which a metaphor
has never been written.) My nest
surrounded by stones has come
to speak in ways that neither
of us can hear. The nest is not
a cage, yet the absence of
a nest is also not a cage.
Inside whichever– I
know you have loved me.
(originally published in Capsule Stories, Summer 2021)
The crickets chirp when you sniff the cat–
that’s our bedtime routine.
Google asks us to set an alarm:
never.
(originally published in Winamop, Winter 2023)
grape stem the fruit centipede
parched time
a skin between my teeth
fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl
then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place
thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest
lips purple with last night’s wine
new year burst with pessimism not
optimism beginnings are overrated
I do best when I don’t know where I’m going
(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)
I don’t know how to help.
I have been in my house,
mouth shut, for months
and months and
when I speak, it is the wrong
thing, so I apologize
for everything. Mostly I am sorry
I didn’t burn the station
first.
(originally published in Subterranean Blue Poetry, Fall 2020)
walking around my home wearing sun
glasses FitBit records silent steps on white
wood floors creak a silver SUV whirs past
window no peephole a dead end slightly
darker shade how my eyes reckon
in multiple lights their very veins
stretch and pulsate spectrum my entire
field ever present ever pressured
the world in layers I perceive body
as hunger pushing into all frames
of frames of knick-knacks I need to
donate but fear the gift-givers will find out
one may ask that yodeling pickle wasn’t
good enough of course not what was ever
its purpose but to transfer to another hand
or be buried deep in dry and dying land
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
It is depressing to walk outside.
No one of no ones, my formlessness
would be dazzling, if you knew to
look, a vapor in the shape of memory.
I know the sensation of a crowd.
Faraway fear of missing out
in my own backyard– back
to that old mindset. Life of
lives– tenth iteration? I have
planted some sense of evolution.
Everyone’s growing gardens,
hunched over greens
of potted soils, warning
the world of rabbits. I
chase the idea I’ll never
be settled anywhere. Love
to be alone but don’t know
what to do with my hands
when I am. Nor could I be
a surgeon. Or a fisherman–
imagine me, who can’t swim,
casting a net into the lake.
A splash of water and I’m
wishing for a wishing well.
(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2022)