POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
if detritus is all i’m made up of

my love is a glass shard, a knife made of madness and moonlight,
and there are already way too many fragments in this house

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

i do not want to wait until it’s too late

the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

painting of apple and grapes
Feast Of

anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple

Welcome To The House of Static

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

First

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

appetites

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

The love of my life moved from portland to new england

He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.

REVENGE SCENE

Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

You can’t make them love you, no matter how artfully you betray yourself

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

I Garden at the Edge of Autumn

There is so little left of the tomato plants.

Snow Falls from Branches

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

Dis Place Ment

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

Getting Postcards From a Piano Showroom

The two of us toast to a man we both love, to whatever degree, clink our glasses and laugh…

The Man

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

A Beautiful Thing

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

I could, even now, go down to the water

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble