I ask God the mouth the mountain holy
snow where does the rain go in desert
yellow enunciation of healing the sand warm
fingers pressed against a forehead as
firmament or a ruse I’m just saying it’s easy
in growing old to live confused
(originally published in Little Rose Magazine, Winter 2018)
Between floors I meet calm–
meditation when firefighters
arrive. Frank O’Hara might
be proud though there were
no red lights streaming in how
one can wedge one’s own ideology
in a wavering tower halfway to
clouds but the building shakes on
bad foundation though a soul is
structurally sound in one way
how it rises a few floors
a crease in the rope to stop
movement how could an elevator
even stop why wouldn’t it if I were one
I would rise only being this lonely
and quit too in the in-between of
sustaining love or faith forever
but interstitials demand warmth
around mind with winter jacket
how such claustrophobic space within
you can force yourself to blow
air into your fist then float away
(originally published in Literary Yard, Winter 2018)
My high school was ninety-nine percent white
classmates without filter said you’re a bit off-kilter
what are you I mean what are you I mean
all I am is me my whole life everything I know
half-Filipino half-West Virginian so you mean
like half-Asian half-hick I mean like basically
I don’t have the ear for Appalachia and must
be good at math and I said neither they said
solve this solve this these equations flicked
into my ear shoved into my eyes but my
coping mech was laughter
is there another term for that?
(originally published in Cabildo Quarterly, Winter 2018)
Ancient gods rain fire into
winter’s mythological mitt.
Inhabitants escape from the
tampered breaches to become
apprentices of harmony and
tell of wondrous kings–
the bestiary a cephalopod
might preach. Tell me
less of spirit, more of
body. Tell me hunger.
Tell me deserts, dry
open mouths.
(originally published in Amethyst, Winter 2018)
What you do say is prayer don’t burn and die
when passing through the atmosphere.
Yet, somehow, meteoroids do–
though sand-sized, they have bodies
like bullets, sometimes
copper, sometimes steel.
We’re talkin’ heaven’s ammo,
a hundred tons pounding Earth each day
unnoticed. Down here, you claim
able to speak with some cosmic, faraway force
you’ve never met while keeping closed your mouth.
You claim telepathy, so this telepathic ability
how your thoughts move healing this world
of the aftermath of bodies. Tell me:
how does God respond?
And you say God,
God protects the faithful.
So, God’s His own meteorites
cratering His house, hallelujah.
(originally published in Ohio Edit, Winter 2018)
for now cheap breakable wheat is my bible okay
I’ve been in this basement for three days
etc. etc.
orange skies in the psalms of your dimples
(my throat is parched…)
it’s simple open your palms
for your mouth
you could fit needles in these holes
constellations in these holes
should’ve put those tiny strings of stars
in my cart to bide my time
instead of sacks of snacks
to fill & fill myself
until I rip open my last plastic head
dust volcanoes until my eyes bleed Sunshine red
my fingertips light & salted tiger sticks
my preacher says Jesus won’t eat Cheez-Its
I believe crumbs
lodged in teeth will return in three days
(originally published in Unlikely Stories Mark VI, Fall 2017)
buffalo roam
the sacred land
pipes and protestors
clank and clash
signs
God in front of the lens
smiling gold teeth
cup of reservoir water
in hand (with straw)
I did this
he boasts
god
isn’t it beautiful
the way people rally
sinking ships
a river knows
only the land
it flows through
(originally published in Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Spring 2018)
On the way home from my first Passover
with your family we stop at an Olive Garden
in flyover country, where the waitress tells us
Happy Easter and, when you tell her we forgot
but still want angel hair, she jokes her last
table mistook pesto for alfredo. Sometimes
people confuse one god for another but never
their own, and food is ours– Jesus rising
with the dough of endless breadsticks
descending like ten plates of plagues, first-born
bastards in baskets we need no hunt to find
lest our mouths become black holes absorbing
absurd sanctities of tradition. Separately,
the Garden was where our families would gather
on intermittent nights to write our own Haggadahs
or speak sins of rock stars or mysteries
of faith. Afikomans for truth, perhaps, but instead
of matzo an endless bowl of a salad of words
in which we always beg for more
forgiveness without really wanting that.
And the waitress, before engaging the simplest rotor,
asks us to say when to end airstrikes of parmesan
and it does not matter when we do.
(originally published in After the Pause, Summer 2018)
I feel good about myself
for the first time in millennia.
I mean,
I’m running galaxies compared
to glacial workdays married
to a silver Hewlett-Packard.
Here’s the secret to love:
treat yourself like shit
until you find someone
who makes you not
treat yourself like shit (lotus
petals unfolding…)
There are worse pasts
than ones rooted in mud,
being one who never snorted
or crushed up little orange pills to
ride into the eternity of night. Each
darkness used to be forever. My feet
would walk last week’s scattered toenail clippings
in my small bedroom. Dad often said drinking water
flushes the poison out of your system. The light
of morning flushes each yesterday. Even my toilet,
now armed in the tank with self-cleansing blue
discus, reincarnates in purified clouds. But I am
half-lion, half-man, when sprinting Neil
Avenue, bleach seeping from skin
into my sensitive parts.
The rotation of running
makes me laundry-in-progress
inside this spinning rock. I won’t lie
and say I have forgotten each love
in all our small mutual failures,
how running through neighborhoods
caused us to stumble into intersections
like Flower & 7th or how, in sprinting
toward imaginary finish lines,
we never flung our bodies
through the atmosphere of believing
forever-is-our-rhododendron-garden. Instead
we’d gash our knees on concrete,
look into each other’s black eyes
and laugh, believing we may have fooled
ourselves for good this time. At home
we’d foam our cuts with hydrogen peroxide
from those cheap, brown, plastic bottles
and wonder why some wounds won’t bubble
while others form dwarf star whites
who sting, then fade, in time.
(originally published in The Indianapolis Review, Summer 2017)
The only good thing in this city
is my 1968 Coupe– long, slick, olive
green. Brakes, good. Tires–
fair. I may have worn the rubber too quickly
the way I sped through red lights after you said Jesus
would save me in these hard rains that summon
mud from yesterday, hell onto asphalt, and hiding
under the sheet you wouldn’t show me
your face anymore, said everything
turns to wine in time, but in this city there
are thousands of dry fish waiting for rain,
and you can be a kind of Jesus, you can
redeem your soul for bread.
(originally published by Eunoia Review, Fall 2016)