A selection of my published work. I’ll likely swap out pieces from time to time.

Everything Becomes Music When We Dance to It

Flowers crowd shoulder to shoulder in vases
on white-clothed tables, confetti on the floor.
A candy cigarette slips from one set of tiny fingers
to the next.

You can bet on the number of times a fly will land
on a Coke can’s lip. Watch and do not interfere.
It remains a little longer each time, sensing in
whatever passes for a fly’s brain that it is safe.

With each bite, the cigarette grows shorter.
The smoker tilts her head, purses her lips
and fills the air with invisible pink clouds.

Originally published in The Madison Review.

***

Birds Build Magnificent Arches

Birds migrate the wrong way and settle 
between the bricks of an arch, gateway to
a landscape already visible, already claimed. 
Ripples of hills, the blue penstrokes 
where peaks meet horizon.

Birds spontaneously change species,
develop convenient memories.
This terrain is its own map, the ranks
of mountains only a decoy for a range 
of upside-down v’s and w’s.

Birds roast other birds on forks,
fat dripping onto the coals.
To step through is to see the way
we came has aged a hundred years,
the road having forgotten us.

Birds build magnificent arches 
out of brick, framing landscapes
only to fly over them.

Originally published in Routes Between Raindrops

***

Ouroboros

I compare you to frost. Your name painted 
by fingertip on a windowpane canvas. 
You speak serpent, seethe, slithering thing. 
My doffed skin on the shower floor. 

There is truth in the scent of earth 
incubated under a ceiling of fallen leaves. 
The story we are born knowing, the beginning 
and end chiming as one in the body’s bell.

We cannot agree on when we came together. 
In the end, we divide everything. The chill 
that sends shoots retreating into soil. Hissings of 
questions left to glide away in s-shaped trails.

Our locked eyes would speak in lessons, 
the unwritten calendar of snow yielding to sun. 
Teach me the difference between poisonous 
and venomous. Twine with me and trade 
warmth for warmth. Speak: sheltered, secret, solely this.

Originally published in Third Wednesday

***

How Old Are You Now?

Birthday crows perch themselves 
in soldiers’ ranks along the birthday 
gutters. A tang of birthday tear gas 
wafts in from some birthday protest 
two streets away. Your eyes never 
forget the taste. Every birthday cake 
going forward is ruined. Birthday 
clouds spit fat drops of birthday rain. 
The birthday sun blows itself out.

Originally published in Cloudbank