When Josh lingers at the end
of the workday, I think of Stand
By Me: kids’ backs covered
in leeches in the woods–
can’t push away or peel
him off, his limb-thin branches
that walk out into the dark
parking lot and back in
to bug us, again and
again, scribbling his
footprints all over concrete
in a scuffmark infinity.
I have never seen someone
so happy to have shot someone.
He returned one
weekend from Albany,
roaring with energy, eager
to tell the whole office
that burglars stole half-
million dollar lamps
from his house, but he’s
glad they did not get it
all, and how he perched
for several hours on his
staircase, alongside the fading
sun– the story convoluted
and convulsed in his hands,
the several times I heard
it told in the hallway,
in the kitchen, showing
photos of hideous antiques.
He claims to know they would
be coming. And that he
was getting updates
on the critical person’s
condition, and the words
come bursting out of his
mushroom cloud mouth
that he would have loved.
(originally published in Toasted Cheese Literary Magazine, Spring 2024)
production office
I have been drowning in work
but the sun still floats past 8 PM
& I wonder where time went
sunk in the blue glow
of overheating machines
it is Monday
and everyone hates Mondays
because this past weekend
I went to a house concert
in the state I once lived in
only to return to the wheel
and drive a few marathons
windows open music loud
past spontaneous roadkill
and honeybee fields
last night I slept on a pile
of unsigned documents
dreamt of paper cuts
and Parochial school
I bought green bananas
for the office
and by the end
of the day
they were brown
(originally published in The /temz/ Review, Spring 2025)
The Film
Sometimes I sit at a café window
watching pedestrians pass and I think
all the people in this life I’ll never
know, these strangers in the space
we share, an unseen assistant
director setting up the scene and
critics will leave harsh reviews for lack of
dramatic irony, or subtle comedy, whatever
the previous scene sets up, or seemed to
be leading to, but the longer I move
through its runtime, the more I fear
a lack of coherence, that Chekhov’s
son never grows into what Chekhov
demands– the boy dies a few acts
later, randomly, and still the film marches
on, aiming the lens high toward some plastic
profundity with its pervasive god
and blue sky gazing through a tall
circle of trees, leaves swaying, keyboard
guitar, so frustrating, and later will be an op-ed
from the Production Coordinator that outlines
the sacrifices needed when the rented lens
shattered, dropped from a rooftop, costing a
hundred thousand, and the producers had yelled
about budget cuts yet still wanted an endless
duration, excess cast members extricated with
no follow-up but others too much, your dead
dad referenced with each hailstorm, you grow
tired of the metaphor then sit in the park
watching people pass when a past lover
from act twenty-seven enters stage left
with a pup and you wave, a stunt, restless
limb, in case she asks, which she won’t,
she’ll avoid eye contact because she is
no longer in the contract, can’t say a word
without pay, but still she will
wonder if you are the same actor,
and I’ll have to rewind a long while
to see if you are.
(originally published in A God You Believed In [Pinhole Poetry, 2023])
The View at Work: Dump Trucks
Look at this kingdom of garbage
trucks. A survey underneath
the 31st St. Bridge, where I spend
my horrible days collecting.
It is Friday night and there is
pressure to deliver. I told you
nothing we do here is important,
so take a deep breath. Smell
the compost of contemporary
capitalism. My blue brain
has ceased to need a function.
My winter is every man’s
desire for himself. It is waiting
for my back to give and bear
the weight of the waste:
the compacted nature of my life,
squandering, squandering,
squandering the ineffable.
(originally published in A God You Believed In - Pinhole Poetry, 2023)
This Vestibule
& within this vestibule the sighing & side-glances,
demands for just-asked-for jackets, & axes dealt
to execs in their excess, & star-born nephews needing
validation; & on this thin strip of wooden walkway,
in the gaze of dead deer, a floor air bubble that shocks
& wilders passers-by who have walked upon it one
thousand times, beside the gunshots on television
(free film school for everyone!) where we have
seen passive-aggression, passing gremlins, & a red-
state journeyman who lusts for connection along-
side extras lost from fittings (if they just turned right
past the blue truck, an open door you can’t see
from here, here, where we have waited for a call
sheet for hours), & once, there was a heavy storm
& we watched a CATERING cone withstand
the rain & hail & screeching wind & we were on the
inside, too, through the glass, rooting everyone on–
yet hollered in catharsis when it tumbled down.
(originally published in Osmosis Press, Fall 2023)
Zone 28
Tara, the arcade was not the answer
(air hockey shots & bowling) such
fantastical surrendering with hollow
hunger & the terrapin match /
between dinosaurs Maureen was
drunk & screaming. typical
punch bowl. red & strung
with lights I lied about my blue
ice I said I did not have enough
but I drove to Taco Bell next door
& ate five soft ones texted
you I made it (though I live somewhere
different now) home if I move
how will the wind know
the difference?
(originally published in DREICH, Fall 2023)
Leaving Work
I.
After these exhausting days
who knows why I yell to no one
the things I yell on the way
to my car after work: gravel
grass and hill road buzzing
in the deepening sunset.
II.
The only relief I ever feel
is sunlight on my face
when leaving work–
the temporary confusion
of unsheathing one
unwanted part of me.
The breeze
greets me
like a once-friend,
my name
on the tip
of her tongue.
III.
Each minute– each second– beyond
when I am supposed to leave
wilts me. I look longingly out
the window mud-
stained in sunlight
I did well in the past
to ignore.
IV.
I get upset
having to spend
the remainder of
my meager self
racing
the end of day
light. I fight
my way through
traffic lights,
red in surrounding
eyes– to arrive
at my familiar
steps, already at
the foot of dawn.
V.
Morning
has that air
I like– half-
asleep possibility,
a natural neutrality,
a newness only possible
half-dreaming
beside the waving
branches.
VI.
Tonight, I spend my time
on an ice cream cone
with you. Under the full moon.
It makes my teeth hurt
but worth the work
a random hour a week
or two ago, when I was
sitting at my desk, wanting
nothing more than to come home
and see you.
(originally published in Statement Magazine, 2023)
End of Week Two (Happiest Season, 1/31/20)
at Tessaro’s after a long sunless
January mumblecore weekend
beginning no one to vent to
Pittsburgh bars of cig smoke
without windows I can barely
come up for air in the work
in which we say it all works
out in the end despite wanting
a cigarette having given it
up years ago just to again
(originally published in Nauseated Drive, Winter 2022)
Production Dinner, 2022
I.
tonight it is free to clink
glasses with luxury
at the steakhouse downtown
my first
Manhattan
since Day One
I have been
red meat squeezed
of all its blood a puddle
at your recommendation
on our plates a weight
to our long
day
but hey
a hundred bucks?
you produced The Hunger
Games
& film’s
a hungry hundred days
believing
the dream is not a struggle
II.
trout on dry
land among
the cattle
wriggling
out the net we lose ourselves
in work
yet
gorge
on appetizers
bacon-wrapped around
each other
the shrimp
is not taboo
nor endless
with buttery bread
I can’t end
this twelve-hour
shift
III.
I long to spend
free time free
but you close
your eyes when
you talk to me
like you can’t
bear to sit
at the same table
in the down-
trodden way
I say hey
this could be
my favorite
restaurant
over and over
to no one
(originally published in bluepepper, Spring 2023)
28th Street Bridge
Every time I drive the 28th St. Bridge I always make the joke
to myself– should I really be driving on this?
It’s a paunchy punchline to no one and still I apologize for it–
a comment on the bridge’s chipped green paint and rusted
hinges, the (perceived) rickety short-distance, its creaking (I
don’t hear a thing). How close I’ve been to a laugh, some snicker
into an abyss– I’ve said much worse to people and not apologized,
driving over the strip after a fight with my lover, suspended
in the air a silence like tracking a FedEx truck with a package
you know will reach you but when? That apology– the tethering
between the space of sound, the hum of a hungry engine,
covalence of steel and structure bonding across a void.
(originally published in where is the river, Winter 2021)