I have lived enough to knife
through precious indifference:
time to say goodbye, sang
Andrea Bocelli through my
childhood’s echoing eardrums,
banging through the baseball
game of stressful situations.
How I overcame my fear
of public speaking was when
I was believed in, once,
to deliver Wayne’s wedding
from obliteration (green
in the cleaved landscapes
I scampered fully across)
and the contentment rings
high in vibrato today.
(originally published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fall 2023)
song
Marina & the Diamonds
After our date at Melt Bar and Grilled
cheese grease macaroni and butter saliva
dripped from our lips onto crumb plates
back when Marina & the Diamonds were hip
(if they were ever) in style I wired it from aux
cord to speakers to let you know I am not
a robot in an operatic tone indicating
romantic desperation my circuits buzzing
& I thought during the open-heart chorus
you’d say much more than cool
(originally published in Ygdrasil, Winter 2021)
Tether
Whenever I meet a person
I like to think there is
a string tethered between us.
Not a cobweb or rough
rope but a violin, or a cascade
of violins, the song within you
within each person, too. I see
you in this coffee shop across
the block; thus, we are connected,
intertwined forever whether you
go to the space station or not
and I am stuck in Akron,
cursing God as ground-
dwellers do. Inhabitant of the heart–
in this world of small worlds,
this blue sunken sea I’m clung
to you at its depths, you cling
to me with the urchins
on your shirt, the breath
in your lungs my own,
each molecule moving
the way we together move.
(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)
Blank Space
The Funeral
After Band of Horses
After my sister’s morning call broke
our father’s death, the first thing
I did was listen to Everything All the Time,
sobbing into unrequited guitar
and an ethereal voice soaring
into some great beyond. Seven years later,
I drink Bordeaux with my roommate
in the kitchen, cyclical tones
filling the room. The guitar is a coffin
for us both, lowering Dad’s corpse
into dirt. Her grandpa died
when this song released.
We rake our past leaves under burnt-out bulbs.
We agree: The Funeral was written for both of us
to pass the billion-each-insignificant day.
Dead leaves own the lawn each season
of our funerals. The same deaths
in autumn chill still dropping the needle
into memory’s vinyl– to come up only
to pull us under, show us wrong.
(originally published in Chronogram, Spring 2017)
Band Room
there are many instruments that we are
and many more we are not
such as we are sometimes saxophones
who have not memorized love songs
but we have eyes to read the sheets
lips to blow into trumpets tubas
muscles to crash cymbals
pound the bass drum at night
we remain off-tune no matter time of day
arcs of trombone waves flute trills rainbows
the inhaled swampy atmosphere
of slide-lube and falling domino fingers
down the rigid clarinet air
melodic staccatos of sixteenth-notes
every piece celestas
on wet reed floor
the band room holds its breath
waits for us to play something
(originally published in Beech Street Review, Fall 2016)
Trombone
Two-Year Lovesong
and the tide comes and goes like my foot in and out of the water lowering the gate to oblivion i hold your hand in highest regard in the pantheon we were regal all the modern day utensils utilized today a kind of balled rain if you can hold it without it dissipating you are the master of the clouds a red ladder leading to the top of mount everest where one will never rest among the cozy mattresses i almost assign an acadian victory holding loose the lips of passion and allowing everyone roam free
and the castle moat which floats in some space between imagination and fantasy holds to the gabardine moon just a flick of the lighter away on some space runway eternal light rushing some unmatchable beauty is found in the absence of all other light some unimaginable thing the first time you experience sunshine after birth your first kiss at a high school dance the music swaying both of you two mouths pressed against each other full of the moon like some wakeful sleep how it is as memory
(initially published in an alternate form in The Open Mouse)
Following a Trip to the L.A. Zoo
wear sunscreen you’ll thank me faster
do not come to me bearing ailments
it was just yesterday gifts of topaz and corundum your ring-fingers will dance will light over penny slot screens aplomb
some shared jackpot of drunkenness
or worse
sparks from fireflies in the Georgia summer floating flickering stars lightly humming
when a hum turns into a birdcall we whistle like sparrows on a branch
twigs in our talons we offer to the other
twinkle of the moon through the swaying branches above
voices like an owl-song who
are we to hover over the other’s hopes who
will pinch us find we are composed of feathers too raggedy to summon the strength
fingers meekly bristle against your cheek soft as the whirring of the window fan we drift to sleep
so California is the drought I cannot feel it devoid of breathing like a sandstorm
California someday drifts into the Pacific I am my own island thirsting for wet soil
your cotton-morning taste will itself someday drift
(originally published by The Virginia Normal)
Theory of the Universe
Did we learn ourselves from the mirror
after we studied constellations
in ragged almanacs… we rotated mechanical
with a hiss of the so-slow
slowing axis…
No equation… can yet rebirth
a cooling star’s impending supernova
If the family cello were given to you
as it recovered from basement dust…
the bowstring part of me
moves… without asking
to the crescendo of ripples…
and F-minor weeping, the lake
awake not as often at night
the big bang must have stemmed… from a desert string
nervous tremolo through the ages, expanding
like a lung just before that first breath–
whole note for the endless meter…
(originally published in 99 Pine Street)