Kitchen Window

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)

Umbrella

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)

Submerge

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)

 

Church

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)