We all stand
on the same polka dotted mat.
You stomp the colored spots
like they’re disco-balls. You’re effortless,
the game’s commands flowing through
your veins. Your instinct: Graceful dance.
I start
with the center,
but one spot cannot hold two limbs!
So all that comes next
is a jumble-Read More »
Once the travel mug tired of journeying at last
and couldn’t even stand to take the paved road home,
Dave lost the dear friend in all its specificities.
But stomp its foot and huff its breath all it wants,
I don’t think that it will stay stagnant long.
Things roll, people shove, and you never have much say
in where you end up, which is not all bad, because
wasn’t the travel mug made to sojourn?
And aren’t our crimes against ourselves along with the rest,
until our selves break or break out into light?
If the sky is navy and the sun gives off
a lingering bumblebee glow,
when the snow dares to fall but is too shy to stay,
and you start to sense that you’re alone,
with the village distant and you in the desert-
I see how you feel in my soul.
But what do you hear? And what do you cry?
What secrets do you know?
When my black butterflies come
with their razor wings that make me bleed,
and they darken the horizon as far as eye can see,
(And the black butterflies do come,
with their razor wings that scratch and screech
on the chalkboard of my heart, to start to suck the nectar out.)Read More »
Clustered leaves form a nest for the cloud
as I lie below, the tree’s outstretched arms
strengthened and still, waiting for the sky crown
to up and flit away, as I sit upon the tree’s feet
like a second weight, fragile as a burden,
heavy as royalty.
Scrapes and scuttles above my bed
but beneath the record player crooning
carols for the sliders and shufflers
to grate and whoosh to-
Do tree and garland rise in the upstairs room?
Or does the furniture scoot to perfect
disorganization?
And that, for feet to twirl and sway-
for the first or hundredth time?
With arms open as wide as the heartsRead More »
Place me along the breast of the blue jay when it claps its wings,
that I too may turn concave,
blown back by its power’s rush,Read More »
It is with urgency that the crickets chirp in each other’s gaps.
The wind rushes through the reeds on repeat,
as a lapping wave, and the owls insist
on crying out their rhetoric. Would that I had doneRead More »
My feelings towards you confuse me,
or at least they would
if I ever bothered to think about them.
I don’t.Read More »
She wraps the word up in French,
like a foreign language leaves her
one step removed
from the vulnerable truth-
she has a love in her handsRead More »
Alphabet Ravine 