Welcome!

I have counseling in the morning, school in

the afternoon, and a rooftop diner shift at six. 

The rain simmers the coming rain. I wonder if 

a fettered wolf would follow its collective into

the sea. I will not die for two reasons: oak leaves

and pocket money. The mirror prefers that you

tell it the truth, so I mutter “maybe eggs on their

own are not breakfast.” You nitwit! it yells. The

big presentation is today! All the lions in the 

English department will be there with fountain 

pens! How about gray on gray? Or maybe we

could badger the laundry for an agreeable 

towelcloth as a shirt? Dean’s List honoree Dafne

comes down for breakfast just as the eggs have

fossilized. “That’s okay,” she says. “I’ll have bread 

instead.” So now I’m known in my house as the

egg lady. Then they send me to the garden to 

rake up green garlic for garlic butter. It’s already

nine. I tell myself I can miss counseling. Nature,

I suppose, would do it. 

(Inspired by Je Dor Sur De Roses from Mozart L’Opéra Rock)

Here I lie among the roses

Where no one could hear me

Crying my heart out of my chest

Then I let my tears fall silently

And water the flowers of my life

Here I dream among the roses

Where the world is dark

A hand reaches out and withdraws

Back into the black

Where I see no red roses

I woke up among the roses

Opening my eyes to a nightingale

Chirping and aria in the morning light

I respond with a broken voice

Fa – sol – fa

The notes crack midair

They shatter and fall into-

Into the roses

it burrowed into an applesauce jar, hooked

a copper bowl to every tree in the alpine grove, screwed 

shut our nostrils and fed us horseradish stench, collected 

our drippings, left us zero-eyed, left our cities lush, left

us wandering in nine o’ clock light

it brought a stagecoach to a chained door, broke the earth

into sixteenths like rocks inside cake, tilted the water 

to rush down our moss walls, threw its sinewy fingers on 

a coarse bloodied wood, combed her hair charcoal-white, left 

a single snow pile, left the grass to spoil

it plastered a centuries-old cardinal against a gasoline-black 

sky, collapsed the final few widows, scattered handfuls 

of burnt barley where they lay, embalmed a snake with visions 

of a red winter, 

rained coals all October, cut a glass curtain from the flaps

of our throats, watched

as we broke through and staggered into a cold taiga, sent 

a hooded girl after us with a tall ax

if one party light erupts the whole line goes out / the world hasn’t moved since eleven at night ran away from right now and filled the world with wolves / deadening yourself is easy to do, you just need a match, thirty years, and a porcelain shard in your foot / here we find the average man resisting the water, who gifts his girlfriend a murex shell as they proclaim the other their anchor / i think all of earth’s trees defeat their own purpose / they all could topple and none of us would get hit / as a kid i watched the women in aisle #4 sew blankets with spirals and tell humanity “walk into yourself if you get lost” / if every line of living goes out there will be one party light left

April, 2020

Daydreams of warmth and love and smiles, that is what fills my mind as I sit beneath the gently cool wind, sun filtering through ethereal clouds.

Of a promise given and a promise fulfilled, one quite unexpected and the other long-awaited. No bristling storms and harsh distance in those moments, intimacy and love present alone.

Of days far ahead and cups of tea yet to be made. Laughter to be laughed and tears to be shed, and stories to be told that are not yet dreamed of.

“Push,” goes the lamp, the black lambs

Of light aligning as chain lightning, a blue mist

Digesting the gold flaking off our thousand arrows

Is this dread? Or has falling always worked this way?

These fruits by the sidewalk are singing, all the

sonic & sonar & sight guiding me north 

to a heavenly wrath

Sort the jars of moons and wishes, shards misting

These halls to spell a cathedral of lost paint. Are the 

walls stone? Or can arrows pierce beyond 

Our numbers? Hold me lightly, my brittle bionic

blessings are going nowhere but north

scrappy hacky-sack peas 

that bumble down the road

the driver crunching amethyst

rings by his tires, breaching the channel

of humanity, crossing his heart, and 

choosing the blackest attire

wrappers discarded from edible 

stars on nights we believe in escape,

coded into flowers, roots emulating 

infinity snaking into the grounds 

of the next life

an almost-free ghost, held by a 

collar and thirty-nine cents

rooms of rivers, genetically flowing

and anecdotally bending, layering

hand over foot rising against

earth’s many hooks to paint it 

a face

a strip of lengthwise matter 

churning clockwise against morning,

against hope