The mossy green– temporary escape.
Rustled leaves– this unkempt half-space.
The oak– an institution.
My faith in marriage drops deeper
and deeper into a canyon
of dirty plasma. It ghosts
and snakes away, blunges
expectations into a bent-
arrow half-
reality.
(originally published in Furtive Dalliance, Winter 2018)
In the lips of thunder, we never feel full
as rain slips from our mouths– the brick
streets are slicked with histories we will
not yet slip. Sediment lodged in the curb
will displace in time. Our tongues slicken
in the dry we create so we thirst for the
wet we tried simply to shield from ourselves.
(originally published in The 1932 Quarterly, Autumn 2018)
From oneness: two, three, four.
Shadows through doorways.
Breath from water. Surface
bubbles, rippled sighs. The ocean
dried, became a city. Marine lights.
Pearl buildings. Skyscrapers so
old you can see the way the
world will end.
No one knows the space they occupy.
We fade in water. We fade
in air. We fade in living,
drown in life.
(originally published in Zany Zygote Review, Winter 2018)
The last time I lost someone was autumn.
The leaves were auburn.
My nose, clogged with symbols,
blew wind into tissue into bin.
Honey-siphoned sweetness
became broken fingers–
piles of laundry across the bed.
The city needed new clothes to wear.
(originally published in OVS Magazine, 2017)
hang
words
let everything
unnecessary
die
(originally published in minor literature[s], Summer 2017)
Before you had a name, you were a stranger
searching for one.
Gravel, asphalt, salt, and stone–
I pieced you together, a church from scratch,
your holiness in my uttered breaths
of limestone, mortar, love…
your tall steeple stabbed the sky.
I could hear clouds dissipate,
crows caw and congregate
in our mutual worship of you.
Maybe you never needed a name.
When you vanished, my heart
reconstructed itself with God’s rubble,
compounded from type-two plastic,
Coca-Cola cans, rubber bands…
I never learned your name. With my mouth,
my body aflame, your steeple burned.
Bricks and timber screened
the sky. The smoke and fade–
the gray, the fog– that
was your name.
(originally published in Pudding Magazine, Winter 2016)
we bend and fold to keep
some memories alive
we, with our doughy cores
salty to the lick,
rose and contracted,
twisted into rope,
into ebb and echo, ripples
of the faintest caress,
fingers forever
indented on the crust
(originally published in Scarlet Leaf Review)