parking garage stone and yellow emergency
the microphone’s metal web against my lips
to vomit last year in haphazard dollops
of song, wolf, and waterfall dry music
career in loneliness this lifetime achievement
many-tailed and thick porous semiconscious
rambling strummed brown fingernails clacking
away at my hard reverberation of longing the car
window closed to keep the sound in
(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2020)
Each time I come home a little something
erodes, a smooth stone rubbed against cement
for a few hours. Walking into Zub’s,
into Ray’s– used to be the crowd could be
religious for me. A thunderspark, my ego
self-distributed communion. Yes, I want
a sea of friends to greet me when I go
home, forever the place I must be
magnetized to, being the treadmill I ran
up to a certain age. I aged better than I
thought, but I aged, I. aged, T. aged, T. aged,
A. aged, M. aged, R. aged, W. aged– and live
in other cities now. The jobs and kids, the
wanting them– I acknowledge the finally
shifting tectonics beneath my feet I so long denied.
I stand at an empty table with everything extinct,
drinking Christmas Ale in the light of flickering
football fields. I play 20 Questions with myself
imagining what my friends might ask me.
Am I alive? A mineral? Furniture? Ovate,
made of fur, smaller than a bread box?
Am I a utility? Can I eat myself?
Do you call when it’s not convenient?
When you are not around?
When?
Are you an animal? Malleable? Leather?
A vegetable?
Are you something a bird might wear? A feather,
weightless as the wind?
(originally published in Marias & Sampaguitas, Summer 2021)
I do I deaden them walking
I talk them alive in the spit
of my thoughts specks of
gravel in my brown leather
Clarks not made for distance
I say to a neighbor hello
and that’s it before I leave
for another neighborhood
Friendship park you can
move in loops and loops
around the brownish green
in view of hospital whose
restroom I use no one cares
what I do everyone is sick
I don’t care I am too my legs
burn with lethargy though
there are days I want to yell
at dogs who do nothing
wrong I want the freedom
to lick sandpaper barks
of trees and keep a butterfly
between my teeth until
something inside me says
feast or let go
(originally published in Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, Spring 2020)
After Mikko Harvey
I don’t
want you
to be
scared. Maybe
thinking of
a cat
would help.
Have you
seen
the video of
the one
waddling into
the ocean
to be with
her friend?
She swims
onto his
head
and they stay
afloat.
When they’re done,
she beelines
through sand
to the towel
he set up
on the
beach,
and he pours
sun-warmed
water to
heat her up
before he rubs
her down.
Sometimes we
have to remember
the world before.
We don’t know
what’s going
to happen.
Kingsford and DQ
are especially
tender
at a time
like this.
What
are we
supposed
to do?
Not pet
them?
Right now,
DQ is snoring
on the blue
blanket of
the futon
without
a worry.
Our first
three years
have been
that soft.
I hope
this passes
soon.
Until then
we will squeeze
each other–
holding
our cats
close, all of
us afloat.
(originally published in Pendemic, Spring 2020)
it’s too much pain to view them in my brain
the brain hungry the eyes always feed it
processes everything as sadness I eat the cosmos
with sight yet fixate on what I have
lost everything a miracle of blood and dust
around me and in the fog I loop December
nights with the dull orange parking lot lights
we walked under to get home and in my hand
there are snapshots of us holding hands
everywhere in the known universe!
(originally published in New Pop Lit, Summer 2020)
The rapid flute of birds
is overdone–
flying through loops
of branches, etc.
Give me a
sculptured break,
e.g. snapped twigs,
seesawed oaks.
I look for a natural disorder
to split the monotony
of days watching
windows of walkers
to the tune of A/C’s
perpetual, tone-deaf baritone.
(originally published in Ink in Thirds, Winter 2019)
As I waited for my burger at Northstar
I saw they had copies of The Bitter Oleander,
and on the first page was the work
of my first poetry professor.
Buzzing on metaphor,
I sent an email to tell her
that they’ve also published me before
but it has been a couple of years.
She told me
to sleep it off.
(originally published in EgoPHobia, Spring 2018)
We wandered the meat-factory-
turned-art-gallery, white wall to
white wall, wondering when to
dispel our abstract selves–
positive, negative, we followed
lines from canvas to grate where
blood of cattle used to drain,
where old concrete holds imprints
of feet. My hand sank into yours
that first time. I still see it there.
(originally published in Cold Creek Review, Spring 2018)
Dad knew which fuse box switch did what–
in this way, he chose for us the light and dark.
His hands blackened from cracking walnuts
over the years, hammering husks in the
night when the rest of us were sleeping,
loud whacks startling us temporarily awake then
drifting back into our own darknesses beneath familiar
stars. After his death, we found Dad’s walnuts
in barrels in the corner of his workshop alongside
spiders and memories we could not yet scrape.
My brother said, to honor him, we had to break
and eat each one, despite the bulk. That Dad lived
a rich life poor, that the taste might activate
memory’s accordion, careening us in and out
the past and present, turning life to death then life
again, discordant in its forlorn loudness.
(originally published in 3Elements Review, Spring 2018)
I.
the overhead light is a python shining into my eyes
this office is hissing: drills, rotors, a hanging
S at the end of a passing sentence.
they have taken so many x-rays
of my mouth these past few weeks
there the infected tooth stares back
in its gray and black graveyard,
deep in its flaw
II.
the doctor numbs me with needle
puts a cloth in my mouth, a cape
to make my face a superhero.
it’s an uncomfortable placebo
makes me think of super-strength
defense as she scythes the pulp out of me
III.
the doctor says god,
this is a pulp boulder
I have been looking toward heaven
digging and scraping many silent minutes
IV.
a drill
bats squeal and fly from the cave of my tooth
V.
the assistant tag-team switches for
a different assistant
the doctor says we’re finally getting somewhere
on the radio:
♪ like a virgin. touched for the very first time ♪
VI.
the scent of bone
or blood
or gum
or healing
VII.
the assistant says she visited the chickens last week
cute as dickens
I learn chickens have no bladders
and no bone marrow
and here I hold my urine
VIII.
the doctor tells me open wide
shoving cotton in my mouth
♪ shout, shout, let it all out ♪
IX.
they’re trying to figure out the actress in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
the doctor holds a scalpel over my mouth
the name at the tip of her tongue
After an eternity I offer
Hahdrey Hehurn
I did my part
they’re proud
and there are no complications
(originally published in Off the Coast, Fall 2017)