this country music’s gunshots slinging through the wind wrapped around Anytown, USA
where I’ve never been anywhere outside my own mind traveled everywhere within this bag of
skin and blood bound to family I become further and further away from each day I bleed out my
own legacy owned by money by the river by the body bags I see everywhere I see a witness
(originally published in Moss Trill, Winter 2022)
of walking down the street at night, red
and blue sirens wailing past, and people
being shot in front of me, their bodies
dragged across the sidewalk
out of view.
Maybe because I’ve binged
The Handmaid’s Tale
or work too much (stress
the swan song we stay singing).
Whatever the cause,
I live
in America, America,
America.
(originally published in Good Cop / Bad Cop: An Anthology (FlowerSong Press), Summer 2021)
At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me
2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.
At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone
who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You
cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard
cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy
against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite
side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.
And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?
Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.
(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)
I.
Bullets ricochet
in every entered home
and they are similar
to ballet, a delicate
do not fall wherever
you cannot stand back up
but pirouette anyway– every room
spins the opposite of you.
II.
Hair on the surface of bleeding
bricks. The house of
violent storms. Mortars
with every step.
III.
Heaven, the insurance premium,
costs far too much.
IV.
We are legless because
we cannot stand. Wingless
because no one believed
we would fly again.
V.
During construction,
no one built us for the long-term.
There are nails in every crook
of skin– every place you look.
(originally published in The Black Napkin, Summer 2016)
they found water there, so we can move to Mars–
red planet god of war never knew the need for mercy.
the milky way could use another arm,
another trillion, twinkling stars, a slow phase
pregnant with planets bearing
tall pines stabbing pink skies,
white mountaintops a cold heaven.
in America, communities die one tragedy at a time.
our rivers are rancid and oxygen is halitosis.
maybe we’re dreaming, drinking
through sunrise– that’d explain our inability
to reason, expecting god to save us
from a doctrine
more widespread than bullets.
maybe we trust too much– the way
we comfort the grieving, a surplus
of prayer, words passing the breeze.
there were clumps of dead leaves before autumn began.
it’ll be beautiful, what then.
the season will kill and kill.
we’ll mourn our addiction to mercy,
wonder if it’s worth it
to bring a child into the world,
shuttled from her innocent rest
to our blood, soil fresh and familiar.
what’ll autumn do, then,
with winter afraid
to enter a landscape
already dead?
(originally published in The Derails Review, 2016)