Cardinals

Cold fronts enter spring, but cardinals
sing their frigid songs despite soft snow.

Red lips still curl over the sidewalk’s cigarettes
but warmth dissipates when smoke leaves the body.

Pale hands reach from corners of blurry photographs–
push through crowds of these-were-my-lovers–

tines of bright puncture darkness. Negative dust
turns to light: the telescope observed your eyes

wandering the dark. Believe the perched cardinal
is lost love thinking of you who sculpts the moon

out of papier-mâché– scope the abyss for stars
but smell the art’s silver crumble on your skin.

(originally published in Thirteen Myna Birds, Fall 2016)

Breathe Trees

I want to ask how it feels to be a forest at night,
wood in your lungs.

Tell me the ancient sap suckles at your chest,
that you pine for a spell
of two-glass wine.

It’s negative-three for my plus-one
in this suburb, the
white dress

masked in time, this intruder.
No more imperfections
came so suddenly.

(originally published in The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society – August 2015)

there are many flowers come across paths
alongside apartments but nonesuch like the

hyacinth rose wrapped tightly as such stands
outside a tiny market in view of black-grim

graffiti reading with a smile worth at least fifty
fifty-cent avocados because spring lays beyond

the peel of skin like waking up to jumbled
white sheets with the knowing of presence past

white walls hanged with stationary song which
would sing if only strings could strum themselves

(originally published in The Bitter Oleander, Spring 2015)