Bug guts in red shed–
backyard. Dad had
clippers with my name
engraved. I didn’t
trim trees after death.
Hired hands, tired
hands, ceramic
sculptured lawn.
I had to leave.
Mom said she’d
handle the rest.
(originally published in San Diego Poetry Annual, Summer 2020)
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)
2012
I remember I once came home from work & got drunk
on the couch watching his Netflix Live From the Beacon
Theater special & my laughter echoed through the
house & my mom wondered what was so funny & joined me
she sat on the recliner put her feet up & she, too, laughed / confused
about why she was even laughing at the mock masturbation
everyone in that audience shrieking
2017
my mother is 60 [looks 50]
gets hit on by hordes
of hungry younger men
at her job–
can smell the wolf on them
(she sells cologne)
yet every harassment story
she tells starts with I have to tell you
something– you
are going
to laugh
(originally published in Fishbowl Press, Winter 2020)
after ingesting
four-leaf lover
after four leaf-lover
we look for luck we luck
into each other in a club of too
much speaking our sentences
our familiar mouths
builds a whirlpool
on the dancefloor
until dizzy and
green a reason seeking
other clovers in green fields
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Spring 2021)
is this how you spend your days? laundry
filthy as furniture.
the room cold between two
worlds. I am awash in
transition: upbringing /
nirvana
give me a place to call home
I am stuck in the wedge
of
wanting nothing
but your long arms around
the circumference of
my body. here is
the ticking clock
a timepiece
countenance
allowing sea change
along the equator
indecision
east of my brain sees desire in
a sleeping blanket. I am trying
to wrap my mind around
the absence
of the life it
leaves.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2020)
Driving across the B-flat of Kansas
with burnt-out headlights (mountains
over whereabouts, gone)– you, the knife,
will cut zeroes in my nose,
twist failure into void,
invest no thought in
tap, twist, snap.
(originally published in eGoPHobia, Fall 2019)
too many avenues to take
to achieve [what]?
goldfisted, I punch Jupiter
through the rings
I’m bound to. a racetrack
this zipline I cling
to the forest not the tether
nor the trees many
branched and beholden
to gravity I seek
to lunge headfirst
through the brush
renewal in sharp
sticks and scrape
the surface of
what composes me
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Magazine, Winter 2021)
The wave at the shore
was followed by blood
and flame. California singes
itself, Thousand Oaks
surrounded by smoke
clouds rising
into a blanket, smothering,
like the chorus
assembling on our streets–
the world is dying,
but first our friends
and neighbors,
how this bloodshed
has been on the fringe
of our existence until
it’s not, it’s everywhere–
down the road, polluting
our hope, it seemed
everyone
we knew cast a vote
to turn the world
blue
so how do we
drown the flames?
(originally published in Capsule Stories, Fall 2020)
blue wheat
meat on the heart
he told me
gaze the world
to understand
heaven
the angels
scream under
trees
their glossy aura
spines
(originally published in Ink Sac, Winter 2021)
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)