Body

I dig for an artifact of me in myself–
hot shovel, cold hands. Last year (and the next),

I grieved on an airplane of my own longing,
finally over a peak to be proud of and the

outside would have killed me. Yet the air
inside was stale– passing breaths of confined

bakers, strangers, hagglers. Their quiet chatter,
occasional laughter only filtered through my ears.

I was (and will be) a hole better voids can fill.

(originally published in Agony Opera, Summer 2021)

If a Body Is a Temple

Pray to clogged brick, hardened
breathing. When I was young,
I believed in God and my mother
had good food waiting after school.
Rice and chicken, spinach
and pepper at the bottom of a soup.
Boiling then, now I drink water
in mason jars to wash away cheddar-
topped hot dogs I ate in some
destruction of the work Mom
put into me to get me here–
how she unclasped her hands
when I left for LA, let me fly
down the highway of fickle dreaming.
There was light at the end of that;
there’s a light at the end, still.
Now the intangible light swarms
my world, and I am too selfish
in my gluttony to eat it–
how a body can be full of light
but radiate a shadow of another,
one you had no part of in the making.

 

(originally published in Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology, Summer 2018)

Eggs

I cracked an egg
with a butcher’s knife
watching yolk seep
yellow cracked surface
rough on my hands
two halves and a spill
in the sink
I have a whole
carton little hopes
silent things never
living never words
I open
each heart to beat
to whisk to swirl
and wish a tornado
in this bowl of force
and gale in golden
pool in cauldron pan
and spatula pressing
hard over white turned
head caked edges
center sliced over
all this heat blackened
burnt but good
enough to eat

 

(originally published in SPANK the CARP, 2017)