Poetry Publications:
“The Man Says Kent State Means Something Different to his Generation,” Poets.org
“Bra Shopping with My Mother at 13,” The Emerson Review
“The Spider,” Gordon Square Review
“New Spring,” Watershed Review
“Apophatic,” and “Raspberry Pie,” Scribendi
Apollo and Daphne
A man will always get what he wants.
An arrow in the stomach.
Caesura between heartbeats.
Flesh, long hair, ivory sensations,
strawberry speckled cheek,
laurel crown, arms of branch.
Light, shrill scream.
A man will always get what he wants.
Untouched daughter, better transformed
than belonging. Better flattened,
better rooted, tall and aging,
than being taken.
A robbed woman.
When you picture a woman,
picture a tree.
How desperate she climbs
toward the milky sky.
How she mingles dirty toes
with Earth’s soft collarbone.
She knows to camouflage her bent body.
She sings her symmetry invisible.
She recalls the curves of her calves
and waist that held like chalices
the treasures of her buried self
for which such greedy men
would not hesitate
to die.
Written in correlation with Group 10 Gallery, Kent, Ohio.
Nonverbal Love Song
Big hands blocking wind.
Kite flies backward. Tension rocks
between ankles. Heel pulls against toe.
Ribbon at the wrist ribbon at the knot.
A red balloon floats along the tide
of dawn. Sunrise glares.
Shivering teeth, blue-stained,
cold car drenched after a storm.
Day breaks with ice cream
on pavement, an ant trail
feasting long past noon. I breathe dusk.
Welcome hazy evenings where we are fat,
frizzy, grass-wet, listening
to spring peepers, moth wings clapping
against the last light left on.
You are a dandelion in the crack.
I thumb your lip. I search for a wish.
I blow a secret into you.
Published in the Fall 2018 issue of The Burr.
Salvation in Three Parts
Part 1
Forget them.
Scorch memories in bonfires
and bury the ashes.
Dig demons out from under your skin.
Paint your fingernails with their blood
and shoot fire from your fingertips.
Fill in the holes they left with soil
and sun light. Let rose bushes
bloom from your pores.
Part 2
Feel lonely.
Turn pillows into puddles
and splash around in your misery.
Talk to yourself
until your throat is dry and your ears bleed.
Tie old photographs to your chest
and let your heartbeat swell
with regret. Let your eyes sail oceans
of nostalgia.
Cover your pain with cheap foundation
and carry on with your week.
Part 3
Save yourself.
Extend bony fingers to the sky
and climb ropes until you’re face to face
with the sun, suspended in the clouds.
Sing to the birds like those pretty girls in movies.
Swim backstroke through the air
like gravity never stood a chance.
Fill your lungs with atmosphere.
and scream to the soil below,
“I belong here.”
Published in vol. 64, issue 1 of Grub Street.
