Jogging in shorts at forty-four
degrees not the angle geometry
is the vice of bridges and edges
and bent knees but not me I am
alive for a little while until tires
deflate which could be a minute
or twenty-fifty depending on the
status of the singularity at my end
(originally published in talking about strawberries all the time, Fall 2020)
Mid-June. Don’t judge.
The list of ways to better
myself always melts off
the tongue: be grateful, eat
carrots, exercise. Period.
Used to be I ran for courtship
but now I think how settled I sound,
gliding over the sidewalk’s grass clippings,
a product of suburban domestication.
Stones jangle in my stomach
as they do at the start
of each new thing: I’m leaving
this city, finally– magenta
in the sunset peeking out
from possible storm clouds.
It rained earlier. And at the end
of my route I’ll be a lake
packing for the move. Boxes
to open later– memories
of transformation, every
day running from
the younger self to now.
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)
You always have to run.
Short North to downtown,
city to city, Indiana
to Tennessee–
one shoe on gravel,
the other careening
through time and space
into a green
where you are unknown
and your running shoes are empty
at our red swing’s feet.
I know you never run to leave,
driving your horizon eyes
miles to sun– and you, after its setting,
glide beside each highway’s unlit rivers
on the bridge of the median, drunk
from driving so long under moon,
far from where our empty bottles
collect in a skyward infinity,
a mountain of clinking memories–
a marathon, a gap traversed quickly.
(originally published in VerseWrights)