So, you caught
me dozing.
Our bed a compass
without direction.
We buy a home
we say will wrench
us from the dredges
we have been stuck
in, the blue head-
lights pointing up,
forever, the language
of our love.
(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Summer 2023)
I am done with dating
apps. I would like to make
you dinner: salmon, rice,
brussels sprouts. You said
you know what I want
for my birthday over a bed
of nigiri and leaves. I rolled
sushi once in a cavern
of doubt. I couldn’t stop
shaking. The nervousness–
I mean, the lust– grew
on your vines by
your side door.
We had your home
re-keyed, then there was
trouble with the locks.
Couldn’t keep the lovers out.
(originally posted in Discretionary Love, 2025)
I’m no fan of gore
nor button mashers,
but when you speak to me
as if from pixelated reality
get over here and finish
me, I equip my knit cap
and fight sub-zero temperatures
to be under sheets with you
in all the fatalities
of the heart. We die
many times in each
other’s arms
inputting
the proper combinations.
We are reckless
when we love– we attack,
we defend, I watch
the blood flush out of us
asking if you will love me
always. When that lands,
I’m finished.
(originally published in Stickman Review, Fall 2023)
If someone jumped I’d jump
into the warm whatever of mid-
May
I’d not leap as the
maneuver’s overused– I understand
these liminal expectations from
poetry
if I haven’t quite mastered
the rudimentary mechanics
of swimming. I am the sediment
from a different continent rising
to you as loam scraping against
sand. You said wave, I said wind.
The red tide carried us. Whatever.
We ended at Point B. The alternate
universe if you’d call it that.
But I said the stop sign.
I said all kinds of things
as you drove through
ocean construction.
(originally published in Roi Faneant, Fall 2023)
Maybe the installation was overrated–
the advertisements got us, inflated
the necessity of PVC in the center
of the city. It is August and I wanted
to see you for who you were and you
let me. Our shoes were off and
in the green shining light we were
vibrant. In the red we could not tell
each other apart from the screaming
strangers’ children, as indistinct
as silhouettes, palettes upon which
we draw the lines we see ahead; the vents
streaming air; the eighteen rooms we lost
ourselves in but not the sense of time,
which was kind of the point:
already we are labyrinths
so why pay to see
ourselves out? Not that we could
even. Had to find a blue GUIDE to point
us slightly in the direction of exodus,
another tube to lead us into the open
patio with the mobile bar selling
orange crush and cucumber vodka
with twenty other people seeking
air, or at least a chair
to sit, in which I am
wondering how close to sit
beside you? The answer
in the atoms wobbling between
us, the slight tilting of light.
(originally published in The Seraphic Review, Fall 2023)
As dark as this February has been
we still drank roses underground tonight.
We ate our fill of chestnuts and napa,
carried egg tarts uphill
under a rare, green comet,
and enjoyed the new taste
at home.
(originally published in Last Leaves, Fall 2023)
the leaves are changing and so
is our relationship the bare arms
exposed green and red forging
forward to the next when you want
the open road it was always what I
wanted though I’d never admit that
hurtling toward work the everyday
mundane our infrastructure finally
I do not know what is beyond
the next bend construction cones
over grass long forgotten words
another dead deer on the left side
of the highway where I have
traveled often just to get here
(originally published in Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, Fall 2024)
I am sentient
enough– half-
asleep at the
wheel
I already
miss you
if I miss
my turn,
misguide
my controlling
hands into
another lane.
I have a tote
of sorrows
lugged
into a luggage,
third floor closet,
plastic blue bag
crinkling
in the night.
I wish–
I want–
you never
to read them.
This is a message
to me
from half
my current age–
though revelation
is what
I want
to avoid,
it is now
(was?)
true.
(originally published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fall 2023)
Lilly asks as we leave
the Highland Park pool
do you need
a dinosaur figurine?
I look at the lost
and found table
she points to, and
I make mental dots
for sprawling trinkets
that must have meant
something to someone,
once, trying to determine
what she means by dinosaur–
is it the green color shining
off plastic rings? The fake
bird feathers? She points
again and this time I follow
to a rubber Tyrannosaur, no
ambiguity, Yes, my cat died
this morning. Yes, right after
the break-up. Because I fit what
doesn’t make sense into butterflies,
love, and the stillness around me.
You ask, can you envision
our future together? I see it
in our palms: a tree with a million
branches, and on the other
hand, a tree with a billion
branches, and on another,
a tree full of open hands.
(originally published in Dandelion Scribes, Spring 2025)
corkscrew splits when prying loose
coppola‘s aged cabernet sauvignon
you once opened a bottle in a hotel
with a flatiron i bring down a steamer
the bottle perspires with no release my cat
nearly walks into the heat i’m thankful you are
present my spine so soft can’t keep anyone
safe best not dwell my memories
are triglycerides clinging the tender
parts of brain we go downhill to rite-aid
we’re told it’s barren look elsewhere
a beer store closing the clerk in desperate
gasp seeks three screws he can use
to make a tool makeshift but alas
the shoe method works he says take
your boot pound with force try
as we might against my home’s brick no
way to get how we feel into the open
(originally published in RUNDELANIA, Fall 2024)