I am no photon.
I am no electron.
I do not oscillate on a single point.
My atomic body has no own self,
its only sister the kitchen sink
who drops by
at random
or when washed with too much soap.
(originally published in Bond Street Review, Summer 2023)
Above me, wing soundwaves visible, a flapping
back to easier days, a communal grass I could
not know I was missing, but did. Voices in my head
clamor for them, always, from windows in the bathroom,
the glowing lights’ buzz, this temporary body, not simply
the hands washed, nor the heart, the mouth, the tongue,
each breath, each thrill, each paper airplane landing on
its own brown rectangle of nothing.
(originally published in Unlikely Stories Mark V, Winter 2023)
I have always questioned
the mechanics of mundane
things, such as how
the dishwasher works
or where pants land
in relation to where
I placed them initially
in the washer, but birds,
I never question
how they work. They
have wings and they
flap them, what’s
the problem?
(originally published in The Stray Branch, Fall 2023)
everywhere around the world.
I learn this at work, a television
production office. A film would
frack lands surrounding its sets
were it to save a few hundred
bucks– you thought I’d say lives?
What powers that be? We’re alive,
yes, already pulsing red rivers
breached with microplastics.
The jingling adds up in my veins.
When I read forever chemicals,
I want it to mean love
but it is in the way we will
suffer together, forever,
oil rigs raised, still, all
over, hands up in ugly prayer.
The burning questions I want
to ask I can’t even stand
outside in a storm and be satiated.
(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)
Another gray sky day, empty gas tank worries in the countryside
nowhere don’t you long for my touch? Oz runs just far enough
for the bone against the backdrop of my outstretched arm
hand out fingers extended & I don’t know where I stand with Jessie
except she must find me pathetic as she walks into water under the
influence of Dr. Dog & now she swim-dances the past three days she’s
walked along the rock edge of the pool. & now I need to text Tony Z.
what’s a man most afraid of? I’m getting used to inadequacy. Oz brings
his bone to the other side of the fence. Jessie says she misses the green,
the pool purified at the beginning. Sara throws pong ball through
the hole of a lime lifesaver floatie and a butterfly metaphor soars
above the water. Have you ever almost drowned on drugs? I don’t
recommend it. The lesson is gravity’s not the occasionally falling apple
but the drifting leaf toward the other side, whatever the definition. September
third and we just got our first sunburns. Hannah leaves the house after
work and like a magic trick, three pong balls appear in the water
and the sun reveals itself a moment. Oz lays in the grass in front
of me before a philosophical discussion about casserole and how to cope
with beans bought at the beginning of pandemic we will never eat.
(originally published in KNOT Magazine, Fall 2021)
For David and Anna
Rain is never insurmountable,
and the sun never gets old,
though we plan to, together,
to grow with green things
sprouting at our feet. We
watch new trees become
wise while the landscape
shifts, as it must, and though
Earth spins briskly– almost
beyond what we can fathom–
it has order, being as small
and in love as we are.
We stand on our plot
of land, firm though
flung through time and
space, the universe we
made forever expanding.
(originally published in The Vineyard, Winter 2023)
When I first saw the broom stand
upright in the room, I thought, witchcraft.
I couldn’t sleep for days after that.
Not because it tumbled and crashed
to the floor in a roar of unforeseen
thunder, but because it was thrilling
to see the way we could play with
gravitational pull. Can my chewy
be tossed across the office with
a knuckleball axis tilt at the end?
I’ve witnessed tricks, your robot-
walk into a wall, your near-miss
backflip kick to the hanging amber
lights off the ceiling. I see everything
that happens here from my suite
on the floor, which is why, one day,
when the moon is tugging the world
the right way, I’ll sneak out my pillow
into the hall, past the conference room.
When you search for me, I will stand
on two legs in the shadows, ready
to capture your reaction on camera.
(originally published in Communicators League, Fall 2021)
You know this laptop, this Android is more capable than
Apollo 11. The moon’s lonely distance. We hold such tiny
comforts in our vastness of insignificance. Circuitboards run
their own marathon and electricity flows through them. Me,
I don’t believe I am a spaceship even though we live on one,
cruising through the uninhabitable zero against all odds,
each of us wired with biological programming. Darwin,
am I your darling? And I am, and you are – the product
of the grass that tastes like cirrhosis to me, the way it dries
rigid in the sun after heavy rain. What I need is something –
someone – to clear my mind, to absolve my white noise
of hayweeds, the rumba of cardiological time. My heart
does not follow logic, it follows pheromones, the way each
pleasurable thing leads to the next until all pleasure has been
scrubbed raw from the stars, that their gleaming was
always my imagination projected in the faintest way.
(originally published in Confluence, Spring 2020)
My body’s buried here, Ray Kurzweil.
How to be a hill, bumpin’ sleds til mornin’ mist?
More slope than barren tree, though memory
shovels in through the nose–
hell, still got knees of green.
(originally published in Black Dog Review, Fall 2018)
to stay alive I must believe I am water
inside my own body inside the river
my living an arrow shot into the forest
ghost slashed open by every stranger
who claims to walk on water when
nothing but air parting is the motion
of feet scrambling to become some
sacred proclamation it is not
(originally published in S/WORD, Fall 2018)