Sushi at
Nakama–
ginger pink,
wasabi,
soy sauce poured
over rice.
Amateurs,
but we love
each other.
(originally published in All Your Poems, Summer 2025)
Relationship
Firenze
open shutters overlook
bells umbrellas energy
I watch all day I am
one pedestrian watch
as clock hands reach
slowly one way up
to us which direction walk
the bridge over the river
time the cobblestone path that
firms as marks hands gaff tape
on what slips this
plane this coil weeks
wanting not just this country
to last forever but what seeds
of doubt to be taken by wind
stolen by gnats
who sneak and fly into our space
if they could digest what
we put down plans to live
here in two years that cannot
come too fast it will arrive
a bullet train when we are
sleeping on a humid night
in the future
our
traveler bags brown
and green means
the forest meaning opposite
of open road if time
were this ambiguous than
I want nothing to do with it
but its hands are in everything
bugs in the unfinished chianti
drown and nothing
I can do to help
and I don’t want to
drink but I do
(originally published in The Round, Spring 2025)
The Billionaires
And if I didn’t want it?
I would have it. Look at
us– we are in love, long
grass abundant around us.
This should be enough
and you have it, what I want
you won’t give. What you want
I can’t do– not in my lack
of trying, but the extreme
wealth of it, the love we have
a mountain rising into fog,
the peak no longer visible
as I hook into my bootstrap
and you hook into yours.
(originally published in Dandelion Scribes, Spring 2025)
Framework
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)
Does Freezing Salmon Before Cooking It Eliminate Parasites?
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)
Mortal Kombat
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)
The New
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)
The Inflatable Exhibition
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)
Sixth Anniversary
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)
Northbound on I-279 in November
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)