News and Book Update

Hello, everyone, and thanks for reading some poems. You've probably noticed the widening gulf in updates, and I thought this would be a good time to explain that. For the last several months, I've been working on editing everything I've written here for eventual publication. I'm not so stubborn and arrogant that I think you need a book with just my poems in it; that would probably be a little dull, and also pointless, since you can read all these poems for free just by scrolling down this very page.

Instead!

The book will include my poems, of course (!), but also a series of essays by professionals, by friends, and by enemies that will have free reign to criticize, disparage and mock my hard work. A few of them may have nice things to say as well, but that's their own fault. It will also include artistic responses, in a wide variety of mediums.

We're going to tackle all this together, as a big semi-friendly team. We're hoping to begin this process in earnest in March. If you'd like to be involved, please shoot me an email; we'd love to have you. Thanks, everybody, and please check back for updates!

the first ride since the accident

we promised to meet
on the west most chocolate bridge
I knew you would be there
early
the railway rusting
below;
your hands dry
on the stone parapet
eyeing the flat broken expanse of loss, sundered
via highway

meanwhile
I suffer
the terrible introversion
of slowly turning legs
and grinding cranks
and the kettle whistle of my breath
behind my scarf

followed by
the delicious heaviness
of a bicycle
at the top of a hill.

you look
very much the little sister
that you are
mussed hair
sprawling about
your bruised shoulders
and chipped teeth
and you say

with a fair amount of mystery

you know what there's a lot of?
Music, in my blood

The Plausibility of the Oceanfront

Do you know how to make a s'more?
It goes
graham/chocolate/marshmallow/
mountain/moonlight/
the sand
shifting beneath your thin
blanket/one kiss/
graham.

We scrubbed the smoke from our hair,
and slept the thorough, indexed
sleep of the nomad. 

The cool ocean breeze exhilarated us
nearly as much as saying
"the cool ocean breeze"
but

after two weeks of rural expanse
I was relieved to hear
someone talking
earnestly
about weaponizing crows
while wearing mismatched sneakers
and a kc and the sunshine band t-shirt.

Cities buzz
with the ambient utility of thought
and the accompanying fever
keeps me up nights;
in a good way,
in a good way.

The One is the Good Year Pilot

If I am not awed, I am wrong
or tired
or perhaps a bit peckish;

I have acted as the avatar of wonder
on this plane;
existing primarily as a conduit
of delight.
I've lived among it, or tasted it,
or rubbed it into my cuticles.

There are times when the recipe
for life is three parts luminescent divinity
and one part indivisible hunger

There exists the gnawing angst
that the world is too much an expanse of
joy for one life.

And then, of course, there are the rest of times;
we are matted fur, and fallen crests;
there is a certain Madagascar 3 to it all

when even the once fantastic
invokes the tired whirling lights
of carnival rides;

life is equal parts
stubbed toes
and Cheeto powder.

When you are abandoned thus by the world
I invite you, all but one,
to create a dirigible
in the deepest core of your imagination:
green expanse spools out beneath you,
vast jungles of health and mystery

and then conjure
the wooden helm firm in your
hands, the Aurora
borealis'd
ahead
and your favorite sandwich
wrapped in wax
neatly
within reach.

Loss best reflected nocturnally, in the window of a train car

1. This may sound prescriptive and
authoritarian, but you must trust me:
it comes from a place of loss.
You will give up
what is left of your time
to the methodical process
of unfolding first
your clean linens and lunch
and then afterwards
your interests and such.

There will be time enough later for leaf-eyed
custodial duties.

2. I recognize in reverse order
your uncle Joey, your cousin Sarah,
your nana, Matilda,
and your own little snowflake, Persephone,
in your quiet concentration

If a little nibbling of the lip could be
sturdy and mid-western, well--

3. say:
"A little pretension will not hurt him,"
then
"I taught my son to describe his mood as
mixolydian."
We all suspect that he is very popular in banjo class,
but if he rides that recumbent bicycle to school,
it's all over but the therapy.

4. On the morning of the funeral,
I made a choice
about how I behave at funerals.

I would ask that you read
this eccentricity as vulnerability.

Memory: Atlantis

The first time I went over
my handlebars, I expected
a soggy crunch.

What I got, instead,
was a lifetime of weightless
confusion, followed by the
latticed cuts and green stains
of nettled hedge.

I had been practicing "wheelies,"
I had been trying to "jump the curb."
Now, I find it hard to imagine words
that would feel more foreign
to my tongue.

Where were we, exactly,
when you last put a blade
of grass to your lip
and tried to whistle
around the sour earth?
What of the callus where you gripped
the tree limb?
And what cries out inside you now, when
you remember?

I have long argued,
argued with great spittle-flinging
red faced
unmarked bottle
intensity:

there is
only one disease;
one scourge
that strips and offends our collective conscience:
a sickle-celled ineptitude
of recollection,
thick
and slow
and decadent.

Memory is the lost kingdom
or will be,
in the ragged centrifuge
of the future.

I will fume and spray before it, before
the grandest end of the grandest story:
one human remembers another,
remembers a taste, remembers the
fall that precedes the bush,
until I cannot.
In that moment
when I am torn out of my own life,
when my mind deserts
my friends, my home, and my name

in that moment,
when I am finally and
utterly lost to you, please:
tuck my blankets tight
against the darkness
and define "wheelie".

Shared Space

1
When the breeze slips in the open window
and touches our skin
and we're wearing our softest shirt;
when our homework is already done;
when the coffee has cooled,
and the cats stretch their paws
just so
close our eyes for a moment:
all this is acceptable.

2
We lie as quietly in the dark
as batteries in a drawer.

I hope to never decentralize our shared nervous
systems.
I once thought that looking too closely at the seam,
at the stitches across our veins
could lead to a certain type of death;
on the whole, I prefer not to dwell
on my insides.

Remember: all the times
we saw the whole thing taut,
near torn
and knew that we could destroy
it with a word,
could rip the threads
of history and affection;
leave them for the movers
to discard.

This year, however
I saw romance in the labor,
the patchwork attachment
but I think:
lean close
to let the tension out
and add another stitch. 

3
Inside the first thing
is a fourth thing
and she says
in the interest of fairness, I tell
you this: if you mention pogs
again, I will
leave you.