I stir polyvinyl chloride into the pot;
seconds later, string it down my throat.

How did this world get so cruel? I
like the taste & I’m ashamed to admit

I ate two packets, then scrunched them
in the trash bin beneath the bananas

so no one could catch me, but if I am
paying with my dollar, mail a capitalist

two fresh quarters, minted abominations
I use to willingly slake my own demise

at the supermarket, long lines of
omnivores waiting to get our fix.

(originally published in TH Magazine, Summer 2019)

you’d think we’d strain out all meaning
in this repetitive fiction of light & scrawl
like cave rock hieroglyphs in shared
language this symbolism will waste
through history you ask what are you
trying to accomplish there must be
merit in longevity a bottlecap
adrift in the ocean for generations
& I caved to a longing that glistens
aluminum in the sun shimmering
waves of brightness folded
tucked into a cardboard box

(originally published in The Literary Yard, Spring 2020)

Years ago there was a normalcy
we documented. The theater

rife with real life. Now
the beacon: a speck

of light on an electronic
device. So cyborg. Brain connected

to a netherworld of litigious
desire, purple forest of thirst

in the leaves. I am allergic
to attachment, instead a soft clay

to be passed
on the highway, tires

roaring toward
a familiar entryway.

 

(originally published in Fleas on the Dog, Spring 2020)

Now, when I am shackled in my mother’s home
in the middle of the woods, with nothing to do

but write & fuck & consume, especially the day
after Thanksgiving, when not frigid enough to stay

inside forever but it is frigid, I want to roam
what seems the unattainable world, missing

the skyscrapers I hate & the open seasons over
Pittsburgh & the rows of rowdy bars I get wild in.

I want to drive my Ford Fiesta up the hill in shadow
& never come back down, accelerate to a hundred

& become the blur of pines, windows
down, forest mornings so thick with unease

I want to be shackled by trees & serve
the unattainable world the oxygen it lacks.

(originally published in Erothanatos, Spring 2020)

We stayed all night to finish a puzzle
of the universe and still I feel no closer to
the center of it all, this box of disparate edges,
only microscopic in your worldview as our static
fades. Our feet were pressed together as we placed
the final voids in their lust on the 4 A.M. floor, long
after the wild dogs left us for the February arctic.

I wanted there to be black vastness when we were done–
a suffocation of no oxygen so necessary to pull our
gravities close to stay warm and survive as humans
must. But such is the fantasy of space– we’ll never die
astronauts on the floor in M’s apartment, growing
more distant each moment we don’t leave the surface.

 

(originally published in Home Planet News Online, Fall 2020)