but I keep bingeing the same drinks.
Fireball, Tito’s, more and more–
I tap my feet, wait by the window
for the workweek to end to meet
unknowns at bars. I blackout blind
myself into the mistakes I always
make– my legs pressed against yours
in the Lyft, I want to say I don’t want
tonight to be a ghost that haunts us,
but I don’t move. I don’t say anything.
(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)
How many nights have I lost? Crystal
lake, I am swimming inside you, for you.
Cheap wonderment beneath the moon,
I wade at an ice shore alongside floating
plastic. Unbiodegradable heavensent
angel of death, take me swiftly.
(originally published in Down in the Dirt, Winter 2020)
is what we call grapefruit juice club soda
and vodka. Also the name of a wolf and
cost-efficient bus. There is where you told
me stop drinking. But it gives me fangs,
these gnarly sharps I say I need, let me keep–
tires spin in the mud, my bedroom where I
drink alone. There’s a delay. Of course.
It’s 6 PM. It’s 4 AM. Half-crescent awake
drink through morning again. Stringshaped
street I’m twirling aloof. I know there’s
been some kind of mistake. This dim
lobby with icy hands. Who knows. The sun
might go away. Your call. You called my name
at the last stop– I wanted to be wheeled some-
where south of here warm all the time. Where
I can shave all my fur and sweep back up.
Lounge by the beach my tongue of drool hot
midwinter. Past the equator. Don’t you see
those yellow lines you’re swerving over…
underneath my shirt is another shirt I want
to remove. I’m running out of fumes. Soon
you will wait for me in the corner-forest
where it’s okay to talk to the passenger
next to you. I promise. You’ll talk
a head clean off and refuel.
(originally published in Thin Air Online, Summer 2018)
If I don’t watch it, this lake
is vodka and I won’t care I don’t
know how to swim. Getting sober
is like that. I go out into the world
and look you in the eyes and say
I’m fine. I’m having a good time
and you go on never knowing
I was half-underwater, that
there was a monster trying
to make its way to the surface
and I had to push him down.
(originally published in Rattle, Winter 2018 – nominated for Best of the Net)
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)
love is however many tiny
glasses of vodka we drank
and discarded
sun shards held those hands
of many folds
this little glass-dagger
carves the elegy of hummingbirds,
holds veins in my porous fingers
we sing the wooden desk
in the alley of deep potholes
our branchmouths stripped
of leaves but kindling flame
to scratch the words evenly
scrapes on the whitened palms
the lines intersect always
it is not simple to crumple
those tiny bedroom vodka sheets &
weave them neatly into garbage
(originally published in Loveliest – Issue #1)
