I sit by the fan
this May afternoon
alive forever
in the green
of our home-
made salad
(spinach, chickpea,
yellow pepper, tahini),
sore and sweaty
from carrying air
conditioners up
steep hallway stairs.
Using the heat-
gun and pliers
I straighten
my brain’s
antenna.
Our argument
becomes static
on a tube TV
in someone
old’s living
room.
(originally published in San Antonio Review, Winter 2023)
bassline we covered
our ears to not hear– baby
blue guitar strumming black
hair, fingers on scalp, face
on chest I would have held you
longer in the hotel, a phone
call to the future saying shit
changed because we
bloomed into the black
mold of cheap rooms
(originally published in Perceptions Magazine, Spring 2022)
All words weird
trees all limbs
living novels
flipped to final
page the spine
of a god you
never could
believe in me
with constant
joking about
our future or
is polyamory
how we end
it gently?
(originally published in Delicate Friend, Spring 2023)
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)
You age and dye clothes the actors
wear, and when the old thing breaks,
we talk a washing machine between us.
I hold company money– someone else’s
wealth– without knowledge or specialty.
You say the replacement must not have
sensors. And you must be able to
manipulate the water level. These, you say,
are the only requirements. Everything
else can be jazz. Copper chords I
know. I riff on melodies in my head.
Soon the machine will have to be
unhooked, and I know little
useful of hoses, washers, inlets,
pumps. If it were just about
water– and shapelessness–
I could close my eyes
and submerge. But
it’s about spin, the pirouette
inside that makes it work
after the basin fills with
soil and sweat, a
pool of clean chemicals
and dead things all
scrunched together–
close the lid to hear
its tender agitations
before its heartbeats
turn frantic. The cyclone
within gathers wind of
frantic thoughts that
entertain the idea of
waking one morning,
fresh off a sharp night-
before fight in the kitchen,
and ripping all clothes
off hangers to jam
in a suitcase so that
when you wake, too,
you’d see my clothes
as a hole where they used
to hang and you’d ask
what are you
doing / what are you
doing? and I swim
up to the closed lid,
telling the world
th-thump, th-thump,
my fingers prying
and pulling.
(originally published in WordCity, Spring 2023)
If we are sap-
stuck together, two
pines intertwined
in gentle branches,
it is inside
our forest
I want to be
directionless:
our trajectory
up the hill.
Up.
(originally published in *82 Review, Fall 2022)
cooped in a house this depressed era winter
summer you say I’m really your friend I believe
it now but before in the spring it was pinwheels
could’ve been poets seeking nothing but tea coffee
chocolates grand canyon space understating
worlds of difference your activism accurate
paintings hang over white walls laughter
your echo screams through town I have a bucket
of these memories splashing out on the short
walk to your place I can’t stop feeding monsters
you laugh at me onscreen onstage
our common ground is both of us leave as far
as we can go to stay an other
(originally published in Avatar Review, Summer 2021)
I want another tiger
painting. Orange light
in our home, everywhere.
If I surround myself
in wilderness, wildness,
the feral part of me
at your door will lap
a bowl of warm milk.
(originally published in children, churches, and daddies, Winter 2023)
I have gone out for karaoke but the world
says otherwise. There is a line I think not
to cross. Surely someone I know, surely a boundary
full of music and atmosphere to let me be
myself and allow the frogs to consider me
a peer, rhythmic applause with their throats.
What a swamp I have become–
I wish I were the Everglades,
as relentlessly mosquito. As hot. As I am a thousand
miles from my destination though
you say I am close in this way. The roundabouts
of the city. How long have I not known how
this would end? That it would
end? Back of the line.
(originally published in The Wise Owl, Summer 2024)
California, 2014, in her brother’s
bed, we could have went home
but didn’t.
Instead, we cuddled and slept
in only underwear.
I woke up alone
to find her on the couch.
We nuzzled our faces before
finally walking into the sun–
already dripping wax,
feeding desert flowers
in its best attempt
to stave the rain.
(originally published in Euphemism, Fall 2021)