Last summer, clunks of glass,
grapefruit juice across the veiled
table. We stayed drunk
through sweltering June, to cool
off with Bella Sera pinot grigio,
Tostitos, queso. How much is
too much pleasure? These half-
empty days of water we are
not eager to drink. Sit in shade
til sundown, table umbrella up
to block the cancer sun we
know. We know.
(originally published in Kissing Dynamite, Spring 2018)
Sometimes a Saturday is candle wax
the length from Cleveland to Columbus, a highway
of years burning blue in early spring, a handful
of flowers you hand an old friend who seems
a little aged now: a new house, a long mortgage,
a luxury car and me, unemployed,
eating pizza and fries.
He drinks red wine (party
hard weekend) –
these blood-drinks of youth.
I buy him nothing
he gives me space in return.
(originally published in The Heartland Review, Fall 2018)
With every step, the air parted
and spoke your name.
Smog and all, would you forget
the jagged alleys where
we fermented, became wine?
Its knife cut ribbons, red
repelling the pressure of four A.M breathing.
Driving home from San Francisco down the coast,
each Joshua tree prayed
to a vastness greater than the desert.
The long, Pacific vistas became the sheen
of old Mustangs caught beneath shadows
of Wilshire’s vacant towers.
Our heels kicked dust
and browned the sky–
ever were the hours sand
on the beach, infinite and pearling
a microscopic glint…
the ocean still haunts–
its salt so embedded
in our skin.
(originally published in Rust+Moth, Spring 2016)
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)
we are anachronisms
different years in a lifespan
we drink wine
until we have nothing in common
out of our throats, dry and warm
we choke out laughter
which echo into absence
that we cannot seize
(originally published in FishFood Literary & Creative Arts Magazine, November 22, 2014)