Your laugh could knock civilization out
but you are too modest.
I spent time at the cafeteria alone
at school. Red trays quivered.
On film sets I can’t look up.
How tight is the lighting rig?
When I apply that logic
to our place in the universe–
it’s too cold a stone to live alone.
When your soundwaves reach me,
in my solace, from the moon
or Mars or Mars, Pennsylvania,
I want my life to begin again
and I want you there
the whole time.
(originally published in Ephemeral Elegies, Spring 2023)
I know
I know
if I can understand you I am an asshole
but I want you to do well
I want you to write in the sun
barefoot on brick with birds humming from their bones
what is a comma
but a fucking shadow scythe
who cares
if the number eight
is spelled 8
or synonymous with infinity?
you know more than I do
this I know of all of you
(originally published in Penmen Review, Summer 2022)
I am reading old journals, putting
pieces of my past in place–
a series of staircase Tetris shapes,
a broken board mixing L.A. palm
fronds with bad haircuts Dad
gave me, but we needed to save
money, and I was bratty. I wanted
video game anime hair but got slanted
bangs laughed at by classmates and
teachers (who would never admit they
found it funny). I knew, and still do.
Sharp laughter edged in memory. I
want to say I’ve gotten over it. Over
all of it. But I still hold the smoky
gray of Nintendo controller in both
hands, and I am trying to move the pieces
where they need to go– but I am
older and life is faster, blocks falling
into places I can no longer find them,
stacking dark spaces to the top of my
screen after these earlier, easier years.
(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)
hats in the air
fall down salt
shaker
minnows swim
toward waterfall
(originally published in BlazeVOX, Spring 2023)
What is special to me may not be to you.
Wings the heat you burn overtakes you every
bend of tongue the mouth and heart I am muscle.
The sun in excess beats heavy on fingers
playing games on calculators in memory. The bell rings
from one era to the next and the textbook of learning
splits in half. In high school you wake up
an hour before being woken up. This is a
relationship mathematically unreasonable.
Split your brain first then your body then time.
Ahead is an entire cardboard runway to burn.
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Spring 2021)
The cafeteria was too
massive yet still the size
confined. Don’t want to talk lunch
meat. Or Drew at the table, harping.
He is inconsequential so why do I
mention him, twenty-some years
after? The bullies are the ones
who stay. I got smacked in the head
by a basketball there. The only fair
fight’s a food fight. Today, he’s
famous. He doesn’t know I have
this story to tell. I
drifted in and out of consciousness
for a week after. I floated
in the river, involuntarily.
That version of me drowned.
I never saw him again.
(originally published in The Scop Magazine, 2023)
there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic
*
once on a drive home from Central Catholic
I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
than at thirty-two anyway the kid
at the window said they couldn’t
but I insisted and the manager
smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
bag of my trunk to this day
*
pig meat
pig meat
in a sleeping bag of green
*
there is no way to eat a dog
there are ways to eat a hot dog
I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
I’ve opened plastic package
set skillet to flame
lain logs on drizzled oil
*
the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.
*
Went to a dollar dog minor
league game twenty cents per dog flies
buzzing in orbit of condiments
five the limit at the window so all
could see I had the buns. One each for
STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
AMBITION.
*
One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
city full of my father’s love
of baseball and barbecues. Now
there was an undisputed grill master.
Everyone knows one. I am not one.
There is no way to cook.
There is a way.
Wayne was over and we flicked
lit matches with our middle fingers
from thumbs into ready
charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.
*
My whole life I have been walking
away, not turning back to look.
(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)
up treacherous stairs at the end
of January to sit in the hidden
room at the back of the Tap
where we question west elm
shelves the green-lit décor
a chicken bone and Catholic
school what I have learned
is instead of being funny
just talk about triangles
hanging on white walls
the weird will happen
math emotions a geometry
like which-year-Texas-
Instrument calculator
you wrote 80085 on
was it 84 was it 83
what I learned everything
is improvisational
the drink selection
the sidewalk ice the
weather our atoms
bouncing off each
other’s atoms in
quantum uncertainty
where will this go
if we sew shut our
fervent minds and
listen to what we
don’t know next
will ever happen,
ever
(originally published in Stickman Review, Winter 2022)
my cigarette-smoking badass waitress
the Bible I’ll defenestrate at 3 A.M.
Mary I went to Catholic school
while Josh played bagpipes at the Oval
Absorb tradition with sugary cocktails
I didn’t say a word in the play
as Pontius Pilate I wouldn’t
have contributed
Watch men get crucified by wine
Watch women excise their seven demons
this party’s a tomb
of sacred skeletons
leave it to the wild dogs to feast
on the bottles of Jagermeister
we drink blue glasses
of Zombie in the corner
(originally published in Down in the Dirt, Winter 2020)
I haven’t seen you for years–
not since long drives
of oaks to school in
snowy Februaries
both of us unsure where
we were going after graduation
and now you have a kid
I may never meet though I want
to see you on sunshine coast red
hair blowing where it may go
(originally published in Visceral Uterus, Spring 2018)