Frailty and Fervor

  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)

The Similarities

between you both are more Picasso
Pollack than Leibovitz     however
much I disengage    the Oculus will never
be Pennsylvania    though I have advanced
technology in my pocket    (I still have
the broken faces we captured)  I seek
the thin thread between real   what
I wish to be real   where I want to go
if time ever bends into black hole
I’ll head back home to Ohio and give
a hug to everyone    I somehow love
as an alarm    or Chekhov’s gun
telling   you are the people I still love
in the future you will reassemble into
magazine collage   and still resemble
the hummus-stained server in 2012

 

(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2020)

Driving in Loops to Enterprise

We cruised Penn Avenue as compliant
vagabonds to the parking garage train

station to deposit/withdraw rental cars
in other people’s names. For a long time

I believed if you drove the actor’s maroon
luxury vehicle, you’d become the moon

yourself, at long last a god you believed in.
Being one who has to drive it to where it

must go, I know by now you will guide
its hand back to beneath the famous blue

bridge in the strip. You will sit at your desk
in the grainy film of your dreams and sketch

the rumblings of this world until golden hour.
The sun, then, will gift upon you ultraviolets.

 

(originally published in Confluence, Spring 2020)

Float Through

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)

“I’m Not Dead, I’m Dormant!”

                                -sign posted by the African Tree Grape
                                 at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical
                                Gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

meaning
I love you I love you
or I did it’s not dead
I swear in my heart
there’s our little room
full of dust
your fingerprints
on the window
we’re not dead
but we’re trying
to figure this living-
together shit
and not take
our suitcases
boxes
of handwritten cards
Miami Post-Its
and the cats
oh my god the cats
litter the house with
stars we’d sweep
for trash night
on Thursday
with all the puffy
white bags
that sometimes rip
and leave grape
stems
on the sidewalk

 

(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2020)

In Another Life I Am Content Enough

What simulation’s numb you ask
if I want children this time

definitive we boil Kraft mac
and cheese. I toss our meager sweet

potatoes in oil and ramble about financial
self-worth the oven nearly at four hundred

degrees. I can’t stop petting your shoulder
the ashy cat roams in the loam of our love

our newly swept hardwood the house
our home for now so limited already

steam from the inside a pressure
cooker of different timelines. What river

these converging lives to seek meaning
in the biological job postings some of us

are born to call. My dad was sixty-one
when I was born my grandfather clock

ticks nonexistent. We have gorged in all
our broken cabinets to rustle the blue

plastic grocery bag pile. I can’t stand
to live another day preoccupied.

(originally published in Flights, Summer 2021)

The Producer at the End of Pre-Production

gorge on whoppers we’re making a movie

this bag of salmon we’re making a movie

sleeping pills we’re making a movie

thirteen hours plus we’re making a movie

I won’t eat pizza we’re making a movie

Caesar salad in the storm we’re making a movie

no one goes home we’re making a movie

watery leftovers we’re making a movie

dropkicked phones we’re making a movie

at the paper cutter we’re making a movie

beets at crafty we’re making a movie

there’s nothing to eat we’re making a movie

thousands of packages we’re making a movie

we’re making the movie Monday what will you be doing

are you going to miss us we’re making the movie

(originally published in Mad Swirl, Summer 2020)

I Try to Keep Your Ice Cream Cake Cold

It is eighty-two degrees in Pittsburgh and my trunk
is crammed so your DQ cake sits in the passenger seat,

moves the same speed I do in my car in this orbit
in this galaxy. There is so much matter to keep cool

in the universe, but there’s sunshine through my wind-
shield and you– I know– thaw as a passenger beside

me. I’m doing what I can: aiming all the frigid vents
that way, holding a folder to shade you. I drive fifty-

five in a thirty-five to avoid my mind entertaining a
milky flood mixed with dust, dog hair, cookie crumbs,

and lust pooling where you are, your name in icing
illegible– it’s fine, for now. Don’t freak out. I am

floating over a bridge, the sun forever taunting,
and soon I know you’ll go, in one way or another,

into the mouth of a thankful person– whether me,
trying to save you from this heat, or you, radiant

as the sun, seeing celestial bodies who– for at
least this rotation– you know revolve around you.

 

(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Spring 2020)

Halloween Party – A Year After the Synagogue Shooting

a year goes quick but it’s enough of a time shift   a mind shift
to pretend we were in paradise with our friends   a steaming mug
of cider   I had a handle on     donning a black wig    forgetting
seemed the natural progression of things    no masks    no monsters
in our midst    no guns   in our field of vision    truly this was
paradise   sometimes it seems a risk every time we enter public
space   this morning I felt there were sinister forces     beyond
my control   that I couldn’t blame on hangover   it was in the gob
of spider ferns unfolding    it was in the wind     a stranger waving
to me   waiting at a crosswalk     America I only feel safe inside
my shadowed home   doors locked   curtains drawn    I felt the lips
of unspeakable tragedy drawing me in for a kiss   and I pulled my
mouth away    to run to Netflix      Mindhunter      Manhunt:
Unabomber     Dexter    so many monsters   wearing masks   this
paranoia’s a fog    lingering     never have I wanted a dog  more
just to add one layer of protection    past the window’s breaking
glass    the shards and sharp teeth   are everywhere this life   if I
knew where  to look and where I know I should

(originally published in Carpe Bloom, Winter 2019)

The Bucket

Ripples of water
extend into days

we are wordless
with each other.

A storm breaks,
a dog whimpers.

We hear the groaning
Earth shifting

over countless hours
into the endless sea.

I’ve had enough
of windows,

where dreams
are a quick glance

over another
unfinished drink

in the middle
of the day.

(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)