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Selected Publications
“It” was first published in Ploughshares. Click logo to view issue.
It
It will not wait for eggs to hatch, or fruit to ripen. Won’t wait
for your coffee to cool, bread to rise, or garden to produce.
It won’t wait for your grasp to be firmer, or your loneliness
to leave you. Won’t wait for you to make friends, or friends to make you.
It will not wait for you to understand, or for your temper
to temper. Won’t wait for forgiveness, or your epiphany
on its divinity. It won’t wait for you to park the car
or land the plane. To turn off the stove, iron, faucet, or fan.
It will not wait for your child to grow up, or your dog to heal.
Won’t wait for you to untangle wants from needs, or yesterday
from today. For you to find the words. For your treatments to end
or begin. Won’t wait for I love you, or I should tell you, or
Let’s fuck. It won’t wait for you to run, hide, fight, fly, freeze—or fuck.
For your fever to break, cough to ease, or knee to bend again.
It won’t wait for your Please, your One more, or your I’m not ready.
For your thoughts, your prayers, or God’s answers. For you to say or do
anything without Its permission. It will come when It comes
and you will be there when It does. It will not weigh or judge you
as you are then. It will find you as intended, exactly
on your mark, ready or not, as It arrives to lift the veil.
“on dating” was first published in The American Poetry Review. Click logo for link.
on dating
i want mutual suspicion. an agreed upon distaste
for optimism. for goals.
when we meet, i want a handshake.
a smile, real & gentle, but wary. a shrewd eye
to eye. if a glint, so be it. but i'm neither asking
nor gifting.
i gave the last of my polite laughs
relationships ago. i like cats
for their earned intimacy, their requisite
listening. the respect in learning
their themness without presumption. or else
the claws, the teeth
when all along, buried under patience: the purr.
the nuzzle. the tender kneading.
“Amends” was first published in Kenyon Review. Click logo for link.
Amends
I’m sorry is an aversion
of the eyes, a politician’s slant
acknowledgment (and somehow not)
of the facts—as perhaps they might be
seen from a certain angle—; and yet
it’s the tool we use
in polite company, since few are those
who deserve or sign up for
the brutality of reality
viewed in the nude: its wrinkles
and blemishes, so unsettlingly
familiar.
“You, an Apocalypse Survivor, Lie in the Grass to Watch a Comet” was first published in Palette Poetry. Click logo for link.
You, an Apocalypse Survivor, Lie in the Grass to Watch a Comet
The last time your optic nerve received this,
the induced glow of this passing object,
your lips newly reborn by their first kiss,
was the very night you woke the prospect
of sharing your body with another.
Your body—older too now, bearing scars
and consolations—regards its lover’s
with love and understanding from afar,
as it does all the others now through time.
Two traversals of a dark, vacant rock.
How many years since you’ve been touched; eight? Nine?
Since your skin felt skin uncontrolled, with shock.
But for comets, there are no surprise turns—
only birth, arc, spectacle, and return.
“The Apocalypse Survivor’s Aubade” was first published in MumberMag. Click logo for link.
The Apocalypse Survivor’s Aubade
I know you’re out there, lost in your pillows
of ash and grief, to rise only to mourn
yesterday, today, and all tomorrows,
wrapped alone in strange strangling sheets, worn
as little shrouds after the little death
of another sunset celebration.
Each night a worship of pink delights, breath
held captive in our private elation
we spin and tumble alone through the dark,
a binary act, a two-body team
you the star, and I chasing in your arc,
your satellite, your codependent dream.
Yet each night, I slip away in the black.
Forgive me, my light; you always come back.
These three “Apocalypse Survivor” sonnets were first published in Columbia Poetry Review. Click logo for link.
Three “Apocalypse Survivor” Sonnets
The Apocalypse Survivor Recalls Having Forgotten to Be Himself and a Husband During a Prolonged Bout of Anxiety About Shit That Ultimately Didn’t Even Matter
Despite years of end-time pains, it still hurts:
it's our world that withered & died, not the.
He thinks of fish unfed, houseplants in thirst,
endearments ignored: noticed in crises
only by symptom of death—long, sudden.
He tells past-self, in past-life, in dead-world:
Yours is the only rain in love’s garden,
but no timelines change, no alt-verse unfurls.
Bed still empty come end of all seasons,
survival bloomed a welcome distraction.
But all fades rote with time; the mind treasons,
slipping thoughts into the cracks of action.
Even now, with then. Even pain, with more.
Each memory a frame; each choice a door.
The Apocalypse Survivor Masturbates
A thorough beating, he never knew love
or tenderness with self, just begrudging
perfunctory maintenance, the care of
a soft machine. Why start now the trudging?
He used to love making love: it mattered,
had stakes, justified pleasure as a gift
to give to another machine, battered
by world, beaten by self, in need of lift.
Wrapping a tattered rag around his stick,
his machine a drowsy emperor’s toy,
he gives nothing, takes all; punishing, sick.
The world’s end doesn’t unmake the world’s boy.
But somewhere inside, he is not alone.
Somewhere inside, tears fall from eyes of stone.
The Apocalypse Survivor Burns Yet Another House to the Ground
He strikes again, starving for reprimand
or scorn, or anything from anyone
in this last age. Beyond consequence and
lit up by the light of his own dark sun
he breaks this night, cracks in the smoky dawn
of his burning bodhi tree, as he sees
the illusion that his whole world hangs on:
that it does, did, will ever really be
a thing of consequence. If burned abodes
are only seen by burners, aren’t missed
by builders, banks, or owners, then what bodes
for the last man, clenched in a dead world’s fist?
Laughter—the very last of it—echoes,
tears clearing ash, steaming as the light grows.
“Cereology” was first published in The American Journal of Poetry. Click logo for link.
Cereology
(n.) the investigation of, or practice of creating, crop circles
Meaningful hoaxes are not
exceptions. Excuses aside,
lay enough of anything
in parallel, and God emerges
for someone. The wonder
of miracle makers isn't
how they’ve any left at all;
walk enough in circles
and lose your trail, only to find
a path. Sink down slowly enough
and you’re on your knees
before you know it—one moment
a cynic doubting doubts, the next,
a swaying stalk awaiting the fold.
“On Returning to Final Fantasy VI” was first published in Gate Crashers. Click logo for link.
On Returning to Final Fantasy VI
I need you to know that this poem
was going to be a listicle, another litany
of superlatives, plaudits, and praises
to briefly top that mountain, before more
would be cast upon by others, to be lost
in the great glacier of gaming legend.
This poem was going to be an essay, loaded
with bullets, little shots of aggression
aimed at nobody, because nobody disagrees
that the sun is bright, the sea is wet,
or that Super Nintendo’s Final Fantasy VI
is a glacier-wrapped Everest of story.
But by definition, nothing’s new in repetition.
There’s nothing left to say about that journey,
no new spins or takes but contrarian,
no discourse but communal nostalgia
for the Wagnerian scale, the oceanic heart,
the symphonic score and global humanity, so:
I need you to know that this is a poem
about me and my brother Ian on weekends
so many years ago, how we still chase them
when we’re able to talk, how he still plays
character themes on the baby grand in his condo,
as I on the uke in both of my houses, laughing
over the lyrics we wrote to the Mt. Kolts tune—
la DA da da SNOOP Doggy DOG-gy—
how we still argue over who’s Edgar or Sabin,
how I can see his 9-year-old face more clearly
than any other memory I have: staring up
at the screen from a crouch, rapt and innocent,
his red hair all poufy with curls, buckteeth out
and blue eyes wild, my Gau, my feral angel.
I need you to know that this poem is a trap
to tell you to hold fast to your loves, human
and human-adjacent. I spent years in recovery
from addiction to porn, from homogenizing
everything’s uniqueness with sex, flattening
complex feelings into simple lusts, years
before which, all I’d left for myself was Ian
and our game, the patchy raft to which I’d cling
winding blind through my self-made serpent trench
filled with asps of my own lonely summoning.
I need you to know that Ian and our 16-bit bond
saved my life, and I need you to know that you
become your collections, those to which you return,
the waters of wells from which you drink most.
We can be our own villains and victims, both
Kefka poisoning the river, and Cyan mourning
his poisoned family; but we can also be both
Terra and her orphans, the savior and the saved.
I need you to know that just as every poem
needs a reader to be written, every game
and its plot, heroes, battles, and bosses,
every world shattered and balance restored
needs a player, and perhaps their own Ian,
without which there’s no game, no story to be told.