that was the monochrome new year
I reached for your leg like a frog with long
tongue and you were on
the couch flyswatting everyone
the walls were drunk too the way
we behaved in the wild dorms
animals celebrating the turn of a page
the setting of the sun it was winter
in Berea and we held each other
like it would never be warm
again we caught snowflakes on
our tongues left black bottles in dead grass
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
After we leave, me and the photographer,
cramped in my car, talk how it must be like
to live to be ninety. How free and young
we are to zigzag the curves of Laurel Canyon
near bullet-speed, windshield wipers
screeching in rare California rain.
(originally published in Open: A Journal of Art & Letters, Winter 2022)
I dropped the screw in the tuna.
The dog got blamed. Once,
my grandma cut herself climbing
a fence and a sliver of flesh fell
into snow, which her dog ate.
I could have gifted you this.
There’s a Christmas story in there
somewhere. There was a better kind
of last meal you could have.
(originally published in I-70 Review, Fall 2018)
Cold fronts enter spring, but cardinals
sing their frigid songs despite soft snow.
Red lips still curl over the sidewalk’s cigarettes
but warmth dissipates when smoke leaves the body.
Pale hands reach from corners of blurry photographs–
push through crowds of these-were-my-lovers–
tines of bright puncture darkness. Negative dust
turns to light: the telescope observed your eyes
wandering the dark. Believe the perched cardinal
is lost love thinking of you who sculpts the moon
out of papier-mâché– scope the abyss for stars
but smell the art’s silver crumble on your skin.
(originally published in Thirteen Myna Birds, Fall 2016)
