my body was destroyed
to confuse the witness
red feathers fell
in dust and dirt
I am not compatible with the moon
I kiss my mouth
illness has become a tooth
return to the deep pit
black in its whole
(originally published in Setu, Summer 2020)
weird
Grade School Cafeteria
The cafeteria was too
massive yet still the size
confined. Don’t want to talk lunch
meat. Or Drew at the table, harping.
He is inconsequential so why do I
mention him, twenty-some years
after? The bullies are the ones
who stay. I got smacked in the head
by a basketball there. The only fair
fight’s a food fight. Today, he’s
famous. He doesn’t know I have
this story to tell. I
drifted in and out of consciousness
for a week after. I floated
in the river, involuntarily.
That version of me drowned.
I never saw him again.
(originally published in The Scop Magazine, 2023)
Eiffel 65
blue house
with a blue
tall weed
sunflower heart blue
snake on the window
board half in half out half
void no sun no blue
the sky fence
hill inside blue
not blue no
blue is the fire
smoke and eggplant eyes
blue death in drawings
a deep blue wind and water
dirt on my face and hands
cobweb and dust blue dream on blue
is purple is blazing eyes in your skull
is my skull same face different
blue flat and bright light
blue silk on blue bed
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)
Foreheads
Clink your skull against my skull.
Tulip glasses in the fog at a winery.
The pale white of a wedding dress–
you wouldn’t call me Western,
would you? I’m warm at the brain
center. Leave your soft red mark
on my red mark so we can walk
slowly in the grass toward the fence
that keeps a single deciduous tree
beside the blue barn where chickens
are kept against their wild wills.
(originally published in impspired, Fall 2021)
The Wedding Poem
I was asked to write a poem
to read at your wedding.
I have been writing for weeks.
I don’t know what I’m trying to do
but I know it’s something new.
Mostly the poem has become my life.
Mostly it’s a poem of longing
for what the poem in me longs for.
Mostly it is a poem of the fight between desire
and desire.
Mostly it is a poem of desire
from the poem’s point of view.
Maybe the poem is a poem of love.
Though like most loves, the poem is a little
exasperated.
The poem seems at the moment
to be in the middle of a struggle.
The poem says the poem is struggling.
The poem says it wants more
than this.
The poem wants to try and try again.
The poem wants you
to write a new poem for it.
It hopes it will then write a new
vow.
I don’t know why I made myself
the center of this.
I don’t know why I seem to be
the only person in the poem.
How’s this: I said I was going
to love you forever.
I believed it.
I believed in it.
I didn’t expect the word forever
to seem anachronistic.
What do you mean,
forever?
Who told you
the wedding poem is for you?
Who told you the wedding poem
has to mean anything?
The wedding poem is a poem
about the poetry we dream.
I see you on the stage.
You are on the stage with me.
You found a poem you loved
and someone reads us its vows.
We try to see the future.
We try to see the poems we are
even though we might not know them.
We try to see the future.
I try to see the future.
We try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about the dream.
I try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about to happen.
It has become a poem for you.
It has become a poem for me.
This is a poem about the poem that isn’t
yet.
I struggle to see a poem
about to happen.
I struggle to see the poem about to happen.
(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)
There’s not enough insect imagery
in my poetry where are the bugs where
are the bugs hiding everywhere cock
roaches lurk beneath heaps of clothes
on the white bathroom tiles I turn on
the faucet and divine water sprays
from the shower head please scrub
the itching away the dermis micro
cosmic atoms creeping along the
ridges of my bodyhairs I know
behind the curtains what’s inside
the peels of avocados and apples
dead wing meat flecks my tongue
will lash at colonies in the cracks
of my kitchen poison in the paint
on walls to drop the husks into
the milk of my daily routine
in and out of bed the wind
a centipede its many legs
sing bristles on my skin
(originally published in Madness Muse Press, Fall 2020)
OK Google
is your volume at two
what
is
my mouth my tongue
a computer can’t play stupid
what
is
a bad
sign like your tongue itching
let me ask again
tongue itchiness cannabis
I think you want to play it again
what
should I be worried
(originally published in Spinozablue, Fall 2022)
Anachronism / Angiosperm
I’m trying to tell you
I’m trying
my petals’ attempt
at opening
an articulate tongue
the phylum anthophyta
glass breaking in the sun
I am Late Jurassic
early Cretaceous
it’s true I don’t belong
here among your desiccated peonies
I plead bee telepathy
antennae
someone read
my mind
before the era ends
before I swallow
pyrethroids
over ensuing millennia I can’t promise
I will adapt
(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Fall 2021)
Hog
there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic
*
once on a drive home from Central Catholic
I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
than at thirty-two anyway the kid
at the window said they couldn’t
but I insisted and the manager
smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
bag of my trunk to this day
*
pig meat
pig meat
in a sleeping bag of green
*
there is no way to eat a dog
there are ways to eat a hot dog
I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
I’ve opened plastic package
set skillet to flame
lain logs on drizzled oil
*
the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.
*
Went to a dollar dog minor
league game twenty cents per dog flies
buzzing in orbit of condiments
five the limit at the window so all
could see I had the buns. One each for
STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
AMBITION.
*
One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
city full of my father’s love
of baseball and barbecues. Now
there was an undisputed grill master.
Everyone knows one. I am not one.
There is no way to cook.
There is a way.
Wayne was over and we flicked
lit matches with our middle fingers
from thumbs into ready
charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.
*
My whole life I have been walking
away, not turning back to look.
(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)
Endless Twine, So to Speak
every sentence can rebirth
a hundred times correction
fluid applied to my tongue
I gag paint thinner thinker
emotions, I’d say what
a wondrous gift, a paperclip
glinting in fluorescent sun,
how endless sky turns fake
the longer I stay inside
(originally published in Ink Pantry, Winter 2022)