Kylie’s at the Ohio State Game

& she celebrates among the drunken dead at the Horseshoe

how ball-missiles fly through air and land cradled in young idols’ arms

I remember this,
                                            fear of missing out– no: just missing
                                                                                                               fumbling
                         no want to pull winter hat over my ears

                                            I drink spiked cider reminding me the summer river

                         no breathing fire into my palms into
                                                                                        the frigid heart of Columbus. No,
I am waiting for the pedestrians to pass my house. Mostly decked in red, some
in opposing green, almost like Christmas, but without–

family knows the apples I douse in vodka.

             family knows my unwell.
family knows my eye toward the wind I find too cold
                                                                                                 & blow against

been awhile since Kylie & I were breathing the same air
                                                             & I’ve got a kind of sixth sense for it

                                                                               (I see dead people)

                       but not in a ghost way more like everyone I pass has ghosted
                                                                              (the phantom passes in public)

& it’s true we both head home for the Christian holidays.
                                                                                                        Xmas, xgiving.

                                  Cars passing the same routes
                                                                 to different destinations.

                                                                      Desolate highway.

                                          Kylie’s down the street & I’m drowning here
                                                                         making a scene

                                                                         her silhouette at the surface joyous
                                                                                                                     but occupied

 

(originally published in Qwerty, Spring 2018)

Used to Play Baseball

I am a nail-punctured tire
the rubber smell
with you, unfinished, our wheels –

constant motion
squealing for still.
Our bodies, bands stretched and heaved

in bundles of clothing
(deserted starling
feathers scattered and–)

navigating roadmaps to our cores,
you can reach the end
and pluck what you want.

I just want you to see me for who I am
when your legs aren’t clamped around me,
the squeeze in the mitt.

 

(originally published in First Literary Review – East, Spring 2018)

The Kansas City Royals Cope With Loss

A river isn’t really blue. The Mississippi
has dried, and even love is transparent.

We adorn ourselves blue so loss
can be quantified in color. Such

is the brittle paintbrush, naked
and grieving, but we are not

the color of grieving,
nor tobacco spat in the dugout

in shame. We remember
the dirt, and who we loved,

long before we searched
clouds’ faces for ghosts,

her grays in the white
within eternal blue.

 

(originally published in ‘the vacant hinge of a song’, courtesy of Origami Poems Project)

Up and Down the Stairs

Watched watched time
slip in every missed wooden swing
and pixelated glove’s plop

I ran up and down the stairs on
measured pink-speckled carpet,
to the basement, to the kitchen, to the basement,
to the kitchen – a treadmill’s dream, the incline
an inclination against elderly lethargy,
the seventh inning, an extra inning,
watery left eye saying, how do you move
so swiftly, turning to the tv to make a call for

the bullpen, the bullpen,
call in the bullpen,

call the hospital:
the only time I said I love you and
I croaked it

in my chest. The mumbled sine wave.
I clicked the phone off,
game ending, closer to the closer, the

closed door,
the casket we closed to forget.

 

(originally published in Corvus Review, Winter 2015 Issue)