I am begging for you to be well.
At Spirit in Lawrenceville.
Lung cancer
I can’t
stand this for you. I
love you enough to know
this world
is too crowded without
you & me standing
around, heads bobbing,
at another live show
at a smoky dive bar,
asking each other
what we want next
& how much more
dearly in this life can
we stand to lose?
(originally published in Ink Pantry, 2025)
Three shades too light,
I don’t have the strength
to lift myself to the balcony
where I’ve gazed out a thousand
times, though the curtain has
always been there, the glass
looking out into the future,
the sun. Never set a small table
in its soft light, the gray–
a little breeze, barely there.
(originally published in White Stag #SPIRIT Anthology, Winter 2023)
What I was telling Kurt
was the danger
nostalgia
of loneliness
too close to the wound
a candle drips
old-timey tunes
still fresh
like traveling
through the pinhole
of a new vortex
I say I am alive
and someone new
knows there is
disagreement
in the leaves
how this fall
they are not
changing
only pulling
by the shoulders
saying you
will come
along
whether
you want to
or not
(originally published in Pretty Cool Poetry Thing, 2019)
your drunken bed / the absinthe
& worm / I waited / in the candle
-light for dead lovers / two apartments
ago / downtown / how the spirits
summoned / lingering
lust / cigarette smoke
living / rooms stained
sweatshirts / rugburn turtle
couches / bleeding
fabric / and sex
(originally published in streetcake, Summer 2019)
Truth is, I’ve lost my motivation to do anything but motivationally speak
to myself silently in my head & that’s why I’m meeting with Gray
at a cafe later to work on outlines for short films we’ll never shoot &
that’s ok because the sun has filled my cup of coffee with bad ideas
I won’t act upon & that’s the useless scroll I call the timeline of my
life– truth is, I recall the night last July we nearly killed ourselves
playing Ouija downing a bottle of Absinthe & even the wormwood
couldn’t compose phantasms in our minds though we tried–
knees rocking in dark candlelight, hands clasped in prayer, a cat
named Spirit haunting the hallowed grounds– we had the ghosts
if we wanted them. Now we want them out.
(originally published in Studio One, Spring 2019)
You learn your plane
has been delayed
again.
You remind yourself it has nothing to do
with you. The cause must be
something mechanical– a loose cap or
calibration error. The crew
does not have to say it’s not you,
it’s us because by now you know
the sigh of steel wings, how planes take
a while to ascend anyway.
How insignificant– this delay
stretches hours and a kind
voice speaks through white
noise on the loudspeaker like
she wants to say there is something
we can do to make a difference.
The plane will have the sky when
it is ready. Until then,
do not say it is broken.
(originally published in Little Patuxent Review, Winter 2016)
I am a sun-drenched willow field withered and
purple. Headache remiss, wonder when the liver
will churn its nightly clarion call, squeezing rags
to drag the water out.
Sometimes the nights are like that in the silence
between friends. The drafts replace talking.
You can’t hear the words with breath so still
and distant, willows soon awakening.
(originally published in Transcendence Magazine, Summer 2016)