bucket
hangs
on
frayed
rope
the old
man
could
not
recall
how to
drop
arms
moving
straight
down
how deep
how
fragile
the mind
is now
and how
fast
it falls
as soon
as
control
slips
away
bits
of wood
in
dark
water
echo
a
hollow
splash
(originally published in Willow Review, Spring 2025)
Get out of my life with
your election signs. Don’t
tell me what stakes
you stuck in your front lawn.
Come on. I know you’re not
a boomer. You say we’re at
a crossroads and I gaze
into the neighbor’s yard–
used to be bushes concealing
every outside path. Now there’s
someone on a lawnmower severing
the bonds of grass, in intervals,
each direction I look, each time
I visit home. And we comment
each new motor makes it harder
to reach each other. Mom’s
neighbors want to beat the rain.
We just built this fire in the back
of my childhood home. These
bundles of sticks my mom gathers,
waiting for us to come home
some early October Saturday.
At my brother’s first mention
of herd immunity, my sister
suggests we seek more kindling
in the tall grass. The air is
parched but we must keep
burning. Firewood left from Dad’s
death we’ve already forgotten.
My brother says we’re gonna
lose all this country fought for–
Dad survived World War II
only to shatter his ribs on a fire
hydrant sixty years later. Mom
would not let the coroner dig
into his carcass for an autopsy.
In his later years, Dad would keep
a hose beside our bonfires. Still,
we hunch over heat together,
burning hot dogs on forgotten
skewers. We dredge the past
again: a year after my father’s death,
cooking hot dogs over walnut husks,
one of you said there could be
an industry for the timbered taste
coating the tenuous meat we’ve
shared over the years.
(originally published in Alternate Route, Spring 2023)
When I think about it, I already lost my train
of thought. What a metaphor! With the desert smoke
into the sunset, et cetera. I think my pockets
would have been lined with gold in the olden days
then I’d grow gray. What gives
me the right – the right – the right
to become my own oppressor?
(originally published in Writer’s Block Magazine, Summer 2023)
I sit in
the library staring at
high rise
construction. Corporate
buildings, silver, square
but tall– I want to tear
them down.
Right now. Build
someone shelter.
Then when the
CEOs offer palms
to my palms
with a blueprint–
slap!
(originally published in Raised Brow Press, Summer 2020)
The sun shines on my goddamn sunflower teeth.
Thankful my dental appointment was rescheduled
to an indeterminate point for future me (who is
that crooked reflection in the mirror? Relieved
to see bad posture alive and well) to compensate
for. When I graduated college, I fell in love
at the slightest touch– autumn leaves floating
in a pond, the draft of winter wind through
the window. Now I’m older and more ragged
(the other day I tossed a rug with a painting
of a lion so I could replace it with speckled
blue) and, certainly, with so much heat death
to look forward to.
(originally published in The Broadkill Review, Summer 2021)
it’s OVER
whelming
darkness
the creeping red
into the garden. the blossom
I align with the ocean
in its magnitude of idealism
I align with my self-
deprecating friends
my honest to
whatever god makes
them actually brings
them happiness I want
to live a little less
for my own interests
if I can help
you bring yourself
to light instead I
think you can call
the results
a little more
often, the god
of who we want
to be, the presidents
we are
(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2022)
The host stares blank pages at us,
mumbles in the vicinity of lobsters
in that overcrowded blue tank.
The waitress sings the menu,
points to CrabFest (overtures /
variations) – we are here,
always, for Cheddar Bay Biscuits,
the perpetual stream birthed in wire
baskets that make our intestines scream
minutes after paying
the check.
It is July 6th and fireworks explode
over trees
and, of course, we think them gunshots
because we are in a public parking lot,
our bodies full of grease that could drop
any minute in this America,
two-thousand nineteen.
(originally published in Toasted Cheese, Fall 2020)
Weird seeing how we’ve changed. In sticky
bars we were tornadoes swirling into drunk
arms. After a certain date we spake change
living in the new blotted heart of darkness.
The horizon blessed us but looked to fade
fast. I write poems & you write legislature.
Do better, you tell me, still, though it is
your will. You walk from the shore of the
bleeding Atlantic to break the binding quill
of former centuries. There is no place for
hate here. Waves of black ink roiling in
for the storm. A comfort, this tornado.
(originally published in The Literary Nest, Spring 2019)
& the Louis Armstrong vinyl gravels What a Wonderful World
while my lover & I sing along in frogvoice & my roommate bakes
pecans in yellow pajamas & dances the Charleston once the track
changes & the mutt watches her & the black cat peers out above
a cardboard box’s walls like she’s protecting herself from death &
how little she knew about how close we all were & still are & what
we can do to further protect ourselves coat our shells in olive oil
salt sugar and rosemary / how the shell of the year could have tasted
like fatty nuts resembling healthy & how this is the last day we can bite
fully into the year & the record spins another new track & how innocent
each seems in the vinyl’s foggy trumpets & nostalgic drums spinning slowly
out our ears into the silence that overtakes the world
(originally published in Jenny, Fall 2018)
tell your father to pull out, tell your mother
to hide. there are children of your children
who exist in an illness of blood,
bone, skin, hair, and lung.
there is a barren landscape–
stone predated ocean,
before the earth was
sick with smoke, plastic.
bacteria teemed on this rock
like an unstoppable infection
that infected power
to make powerless those infected.
(originally published in 45 Poems: for the Revolution, 2019)