Palm to neck– tactile hypocrisy. My Adam’s apple,
weren’t my lips once sweet for Jesus? Crucifixion
was puberty lapping holy water in adulthood’s
church, blessed be hope. To remake myself
is a perpetual game of jacks and marbles
rolled by someone older. Rejecting rules,
I say I’ll get better.
(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2019)
same as spit
on a band room floor
poolside
without knowing we are all
skeletons
holding information too
great to actually understand
trombone blaring
mouths into the sea
flute-marching
to conformity’s beat
suntan lotion and absurdism
smother meaningless philosophies all
over your skin and block out the rest
(originally published in Ghost City Review, Winter 2019)
green teeth
under banana light
soda chemicals fizzle
out tubes in the wall
overhead dims
and brightens
shoeprint mud
on the floor
a brown apron
discarded
with others
(originally published in Literary Yard, Summer 2018)
A cave, a raven horse-
hoofed sunlit human. Your journey
to know you forward: yourself
tar. Orange toward opening.
Darkness, fire, form,
wing.
(originally published in Indiana Voice Journal, Winter 2018)
I take one pill two
to mask what’s wrong in me
these hurtful words mouthing
sorry in the dark I shouldn’t rub
your back when my partner’s
on the coast on a beach here
it snows yes I know
this is no excuse tasteless tablet
smudged slate white mountain
I am the one percent meaning
I’m money poor but lucky to
live in the age of modern medicine
a dentist takes a drill
to my root and neither of us
feel anything a surgeon cuts
into Dad’s heart anesthetics
these aches we carry daily
the privilege why we don’t
say sorry when we mean it
at the drug store I buy a knife
(originally published in The Wayward Sword, Summer 2018)
past the corner of this house’s Kubrick architecture
on the couch a bundle of eyes
a slopping visual stain
but it’s true. my vision is blurry
I spent the walking sidewalk
grapes inside my right cheek
thinking how I want to win you.
so romantic, you
with a stranger in my house
about to
dine on the fruit of
ancient gods and I am laughing
now to have the ghost
within my walls, my green
heart long and longing
lunging out my chest
it sticks to paint
like spaghetti
(originally published in streetcake, Summer 2018)
organ of the trees ring
the heart’s synthetic beating
the stepstep crunch
of leaves a drumbreathe
tenderly
the forest i lose
me the eye leaves
somewhere someone sees me
whose real
branch
of body
how corporeal the limbs
these purple nights return
(originally published in Kettle Blue Review, Fall 2018)
wish I still knew how to talk about games
movies television sports
blue fish waddling onto soil of questions trudges
leaves bodyprints wet move
closer to some common thread we may yet find
yet know a fishing line in the reel of your hand
mouth brain our friendship was incorrigible
as the moon in a poem in a lit mag
super nintendo and the cement unfinished
scent of basements carpeted staircases doritos
always going down down down
affection every thump downward
like the rest of life tumbling
through deserts of thought mist sandstorm
the sun wrangles some truth out of stranded
windows translucent sunlight
shifting across the wooden table
of distance time summers
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review, Summer 2018)
Flowers & God–
you tell me, slipshod,
there’s an afterlife
in the party we’re cheersing
to tonight our whole life
with small glasses of Granddad’s,
noisemakers, & drinking
games. I’d like to drown
the tissues
in something, listen to Gaelic
music like Dad used to
driving us from school with Pizza Hut
wafting from the trunk those
sunny afternoons. & now that you’ve
lost someone you’re willing to lose
your Bill Hicks-views-sense-
of-self-meaning like we all
funnel ethereal spirit into sky
& swig the rain with
drunken angels I know
you know you’re better than that.
I know you know once
the last attendee’s passed out
on the couch heavy breathing
lips purple you’d check
on him, too. You’d be alone
in the house you grew up in
with phone in your hand
calm and through the static of 911
racing to get the address out
the foaming of your mouth
and when a cop comes you
beg please don’t break this party up
and deny the red flashing lights
come
(originally published in 8 Poems, Summer 2018)
The rapid flute of birds
is overdone–
flying through loops
of branches, etc.
Give me a
sculptured break,
e.g. snapped twigs,
seesawed oaks.
I look for a natural disorder
to split the monotony
of days watching
windows of walkers
to the tune of A/C’s
perpetual, tone-deaf baritone.
(originally published in Ink in Thirds, Winter 2019)