all night
single cell
call vibration
wrapped
under sheet
with me
nightlong
my mouth
voiceless
seasick sleep
that follows
me into
dreams
I drink Coke
with pizza
the bed
swallows me
but I’d eat
the bed
if I could
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Fall 2020)
Poet
Why the Butterflies
just a little simple contact
inconsequential fist bump
against the knuckle of
your silver bling fingers
the rain has ceased
underneath this bridge
and you polish your new
tattoo of blue butterfly wings
you say the ink is peeling off
and I get it how something
beautiful can quickly turn
into blears of dark how long
it took to learn you to get
the rhythm of you we have
been cruising through the
busy streets of Pittsburgh
in constant contact swerving
to avoid listless walkers
and even that I understand
how I wander through the
world underneath the cig
smoke sky not caring that
the secondhand will kill
me when I choose to inhale
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)
Familiarity
I don’t know you
but I must have, once,
in some other life, the same
one this timeline is a part
of, this forward motion
a shadow of a shadow
darkening everything
I believe I know
has obscured.
(originally published in Plato’s Caves Online, Summer 2020)
Café Bourbon Street (Columbus, Ohio, 2018)
Shades of Colorado, bleak
as winter sky packing gear
in the trunk before your
flight, reverberations of
song trapped in guitar
from the blinking purple
show at the grime dive.
I went to exhaust their
pierogi supply, to sit
in crowded silence
watching the people around
me, wondering why I came
here, the question resonating
along the ceiling, silent
as raindrops falling
from the bare rafters.
(originally published in The Dillydoun Review, Summer 2021)
Election, 2019
Another rainy voting day– this time,
I crossed Main Street without looking.
I know traffic patterns enough
to know around noon there’s no one
out here, and so I walked into
the alley by Tina’s, the anti-social
route past people’s fenced backyards.
I met a hanging skeleton and
a wooden turkey two houses apart,
and when I walked downhill to
get to Woolsair a man in a Tahoe
pointed to the school’s side door.
In other years, there are people
lurking who want to tell me how
to vote, but this time, no signs,
nothing– just an empty gym, three
old men and my neighbor, Nolan,
who I didn’t know volunteered
here, told me there have been
just a few today, and thus as I
tapped my choices saying no
to oligarchical, corporate forces
as best I could, I temporarily
felt the weight of my fingers
multiply, that my choices would
count as thousandths not
millionths on the grand tv ticker
tonight– no. I know enough
to know that if it’s only me,
my vote will never matter.
(originally published in JONAH Magazine, Summer 2020)
Depression in February
month close to death. not quite. i mean
lingering. sword in my throat sharpens.
no blood just ideas. look somehow
i’ll make it through & you will too.
sun a fluorescent hospital interior
bland & tasteless. every song out
of tune piano room. cold blanket
can’t hide the notes dark &
hovering outside the window
(originally published in OVERHEARD Lit, Winter 2022)
The Old City
Love that is no love
at all I park in the
sun I feel the old
city meander and
breathe around me
like the open river
in a wind storm
(originally published in EAP, Fall 2021)
Passing Claudia
in this city is a familiar intersection /
brick / unlike the old: stone / spotted
your doppelganger waiting the stoplight
/ stalled behind a truck and called your
name / as I drew closer / turned green
you waved back / could not halt my car’s
slope southbound after hello / goodbye
all acquaintances become ruins / friends
who shift faces / places to call home first /
my mother’s / my skeletal wandering to
belong / shell possessing consciousness
beneath acacias / humid summer of moss
between the cracks of historic buildings
(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2020)
Inadequate Help
I counted twelve hundred drops of rain
to cull the drought in the desert
but at some indeterminate future
coordinate. There isn’t even a crowd
to be lost in anymore– human bodies
dissipate into pixels on a stuttering
screen. Listen to her voice. Listen
to his voice. What we are drinking
when we speak is a potent purple
cocktail: dragonfruit, chia,
pineapple, banana, ginger,
vodka, rum. I know you
are close when you made it
but the rain’s still far away.
(originally published in San Antonio Review, Fall 2020)
September 22, 2020
Today I am a dangling thread in the unnecessary count
of all Allegheny’s clothes. Snug fit in a snake’s mouth,
today of all days I choose to live obliquely, first day
of fall, et cetera. My brain’s all leaves, caves all ears,
moths seeking better light I have not provided. You
ask how my day is going and I get defensive. Never
wielded boxing gloves. Never a ring. I am surviving,
I say, the minimum. My form conjures shadows.
Drop me a rope. I must climb out from this well.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Winter 2021)