It’s daunting, the path
leading out
to the world.
My car’s been
out of use
for weeks
and rusts
on the street.
I’d prefer simpler
times:
chalk ghosts
on concrete–
now, don’t
come so close.
(originally published in Pendemic, Spring 2020)
quarantine
Gummies
Stress-eating sour worms
while working from home.
A dumb numbness. Live
a weekend for a little
joy. A stressed syll-
able. A stretched neon
bleeding the pumps
from my heart, my long
and yellow heart, crusted
from swallowing earth’s
bitter notes back. I used
to take outside for granted.
(originally published in The Writing Disorder, Spring 2021)
Fall Guys #2
all this balance nothing to show for it
seesaw the most patient of virtues–
patience
get up god damn it
when you fall can you please get the fuck up
lemons fire from cannons
zest on my back
& I am always running
can’t say the words right in my head
but in the glitch of No Music just levers clicking
& motherfuckers shouting woo! in the sorry
white
sky
(originally published in TRIBES, Fall 2021)
It’s 9:45 I’m Happy to Be Alive
I’m in bed an engine revs a motorcycle outside
someone on this street screams slow down
but I finish our pack of blueberries, I apologize
what for? We were both eating them. The small
sour ones. The large C-flat ones. Near the end
I say these kinda taste weird. You say they’re
very sweet. I apologize what for? Where I’m at
I can complain about such sweetness.
(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)
March 16, 2020
I read that gun store
sales have surged, that
they have lines around the
chopping block. So we
decide when shots
rupture our street,
we’ll drive to my mom’s–
far from any city–
instead of hiding in a
closet in our basement
of centipedes.
Should we go there now?
No, we should wait it out.
We uncork a white wine
and play twenty games
of Trouble. Hours of
moving plastic pieces in
circles. Though trapped
in a bubble, the die
dictates our every move.
(originally published in Capsule Stories, Spring 2020)
Self-Isolation (Day One, March 14, 2020)
Hands are raw from cheap soap
and scrubbing. We’re jobless now
so here’s the sink full of
better times we’re rinsing.
Let’s rearrange the living
room, drag the couch
from the side wall
to the back wall,
place the coat rack
in a different dusty corner,
treat the TV like
the god it wants to be.
There will be many
forms of worship,
this distancing.
Books. Cooking.
Writing. Pining.
Finally, I have time
to make music
and poetry but
I can’t put my phone
down– notifications
for each cog of society
as it breaks down.
You ask
should we hang
art on the walls?
I ask, what art?
(originally published in American Writers’ Review, Summer 2020)
2020
The people I love have never been further
& I’ve never been so nervous this long
not knowing which of the weeks
will be the one I can leave & be bound
to the beginning I will uncork
this love inside me (ever underground
and rooting) such that crowds will be
willed into existence again. But
we don’t need the shopping mall.
Slabs of pumice stone I saw
inside the consumers. Instead
of bedding the concourse
you asked for an airplane
and received as a gift
a ballot. A bailout for the sky
and everything within:
what’s the origin of acid
in the rain? Surely we couldn’t
be so monstrous. I’ve won a
thousand wars these thirty
years but none like isolation.
I’m feeding into the frenzy
like the marketers want me
to. The markets want me
dead, but still they want
my money.
(originally published in Flashes, Fall 2021)
Two Weeks
Like yesterday, I say
I won’t leave the house for
spinach seeds. We have to
make with what we have.
I’m listening to Grizzly Bear,
like yesterday. I say
my favorite song is Two Weeks–
eighth-note piano ends for vocals.
I won’t leave the house for,
at best, two weeks after. But
I can’t live on only singing.
Spinach seeds. We have to.
(originally published in Gingerbread Ritual Literary Journal, Winter 2022)
Frailty and Fervor
the religiosity of longing
potatoes are my new church
long-lasting water-scrubbed love
in the oven eleven of them
I want you to count
carefully
our time remaining
provided what we want
we really want
is growing underground in vast distant fields
if we could see well enough to count
(originally published in HAD, Winter 2022)
Watering a Flower
Meditation is mellifluous
melody ignoring the choo-
choo train inside my head,
but I have been growing
better, forth in time.
There are meadows
I will never enter – renter
of everything. Nothing I meet
in this life I keep. Honest. Lover
bearing forever strands
of hair? God, infinity is
so infinite when glimpsed.
Such the rose moon
grows on this
specific sky.
(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)