You sit on a bench on Walnut Street
texting with a boomerang smile the wine
glasses around you cycling out strangers
and I want to ask you for a drink you ask
about my bags of food I’m bringing back
to work and the sky is cerulean your voice
in the cacophony of cars starting stopping
the crowd around us whispering midday
in the sunshine I want to walk free without
work I’d say the first bite this world is yours
(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Summer 2020)
Now that I live on a well-traveled
street, you’d think I’d pass candy on
the designated day. I was at
Shady Grove for the first hour.
The servers were vampires,
I was wearing a poncho.
The lights were off (how I like it)
when I got home, not a soul in sight.
And it was trash night. So I gathered
the usual garbage and recycling,
set it by the door. And when I opened
it a kid vaporized from nowhere
chanting trick or treat! trick or treat!
give me something good to eat!
Staring at me carrying white
marinara-stained bag and a baby
blue bag in the darkness
of the porch and I said,
I don’t have anything,
thank you– I mean, sorry.
In my navy sweatpants
I walked briskly to the curb,
the wind wanting to push me
toward the black gravel of the road
but I swiveled the direction
of home. A gaggle of swan tweens
flew toward me! I covered my face,
put my head down, walked up the blind
trio of stairs far from the rustling
footsteps and laughter and wind
and turned the living room light off,
shawled myself with the couch blanket
and reached for a crinkling half-bag
of factory favorites, a Milky Way
or Kit-Kat somewhere on my rug.
(originally published in Sparks of Calliope, Fall 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)
I don’t know what you’re saying–
I was just baptized in sensory deprivation
saltwater. You took an Adderall
to live in your tornado of case papers,
clacking away at the keyboard buzzing
with school sentences I do not crave
to understand. From the speakers, jazz
dances uneven through honeyhive fluorescents
above us. I scoot my chair in closer
to the table, and there is a squeak either
from my movement or a clarinet falsetto.
Sometimes the world is synchronized;
sometimes a miracle I make excuses for.
I held the planet’s limestone on my neck
when I was afloat– it became weightless.
(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)