Take a screenshot
(we’re temporary).
Name the ghost
our stains.
Snap a story for others
to forget.
When we filter
who we become
we love the fantasy.
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Summer 2021)
Poem
May in Millvale
chugging along the narrow streets
between metal barrier and wisps
of weeds along the edge of concrete
mystery sedans pass proximally
close and the rush of wind against
shirt the rush of your arm against
me we flirt walking toward eventual
destination through sleeping hoods
nestled in the hills overlooking the
Allegheny and when we get where
we thought we wanted to go the bar
is purple and loud so we sneak to
play a fishing game in which you
get the quarters and I get us caught
(originally published in Perhappened, Spring 2020)
Plot
This all is a script about plotting.
An achingly slow clock. Poetry
makes me want to be outside.
Perhaps what is best is how
words move me to a surface,
but I remain in my Arctic superego.
What I mean is I am thinking
of what people will say
to me, to each other. A plot.
A whole movie inside my head.
I act in it, not knowing
what I’m doing.
(originally published in Avatar Review, Fall 2021)
My Mind’s Forbidden Animals
I am feeling
dictatoresque
having already killed
a spider tonight
inching down
my bedroom wall
I crushed him
with a white paper towel
as I barked praise
for keeping
more insects out
of my house
but you can’t show
your face around here
(originally published in Roi Faneant, Summer 2022)
With Your Bad Back You Should Not Lift
but it is what it is, this world, this sad state– yet
you tend the garden, lay bags of rocks to block
the blooming weeds from within the mulch.
You try what you can to avoid the world, but
it fights itself around you, despite the decay,
the same as yours, the aching soil, the toil
of the day, the rain and its deep clouds
becoming another pit that downs you.
(originally published in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Summer 2020)
My Privilege
I’m privileged to sit in my home on a sunny day
with just a headache
in late May two thousand twenty. God I feel
plenty guilty. My friends
are linking hands in the street and I am scared
of all that’s viral. Oh what has lingered
in the air since, yes, America.
I have wept with internet videos
in my shadowed home,
never gassed
standing up for what is right.
You say protests are only one part of the revolution. We can’t
just go out there and put ourselves and others in danger.
How does that help the cause?
I am donating fucking money
waiting
for unemployment to salvage
fruit. I can’t say no
to a food bank donation. To
the Freedom Fund. Reclaim the Block.
Justice for Ahmaud, Breonna… If I am not
downtown with my people
burning businesses of bigots
take all my worthless fucking money
and light the biggest fire
possible
(originally published in FlowerSong Press, Summer 2020)
New Year Illusion
No tabula rasa. Don’t
believe it when you hear
television celebration: happy
/ new / year. I ride a
continuous horse. Carrying
suitcases holding everything
from one year to the next–
Dad is still dead. Mom
will be soon. The dusk is
tomorrow’s same landscape,
endlessly looping.
(originally published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Spring 2020)
Sometimes
A suitcase is just a suitcase,
a metaphor professor preached
in college. Though, as a poet,
I make my life more difficult,
trying to weave what meaning
tatters fabric, seeing in it a cat
we met one night. We rubbed
his soft body before finding
blood beneath the mewling,
and having just adopted,
we chose to lift our hands
and continue walking, vicious
in our trust that we discarded
the proper mercy.
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2022)
Small-Town Comedian
maroon cardigan against brick–
I fade into the city’s
aging architecture. chameleon
piled on comedians,
a mountain of forced laughter.
haven’t found success
outside my tiny town, a steady
hand to click a shutter
to capture a memory, as bland
as they were, just few
in the crowd staring vacantly
at nervous laughter
that filled small stages, how
the water glass steady
on the stool began to tremble
as I lifted it to drink,
how thirsty one can be for a
reaction, how blank
faces stamp eyelids, present
still with closed eyes
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)
everyone wants the glory everyone wants
to not wonder where their next meal
will come from– cupboards empty
one day, adorned in gold the next–
to be instantaneous in transformation–
Pisschrist into Christ, prayer into
hummingbirds singing softly on your shoulders
(originally published in Modern Literature, Spring 2020)