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Poetry
Wingtips
On my way home from school / with a gang of friends / I would see him outside / one of the bars or diners / near the Journal Square station: / my uncle, rasping the price / of a shine to the passing crowd
May 2022Last Day On The Factory Floor
We were warned not to complain — / plenty more temps they could call. / Warned, too, to avoid the break room / with its jailhouse camera / swiveling right outside the boss’s office, / his speakers playing only country.
May 2022What I Didn’t Say
And I didn’t say there is no philosophy of life that covers this / I didn’t say how am I supposed to breathe when you stop
April 2022Haunted
Mouse angels I have called them, / terrifying and warm and mythical, / seeming almost terrified themselves, / skittering after the echoes of / their own voices homing in / on the smaller creatures of the night
April 2022
More Of This, Please
In grad school I had a writing teacher who’d completely cream my essays. / Cross-outs and tracked changes. He took me at my word / when I said I wanted to get better.
March 2022I Pledge Allegiance To The Republic
Every morning the public school chooses a student to lead us in patriotic worship over the intercom. I stand before my classroom flag and count my heartbeats. At recess I draw stars and stars.
March 2022Louisiana Saturday Nights
Man who once was a boy on a strawberry farm in Ponchatoula. / Man who pulled me onto his lap in front of his friends, / played my spine like a fiddle. / The notes were off beat, / off-key, a collection of minor chords in my teenage heart.
February 2022The Cardinal Reminds Me
It sweeps and arcs across my path / almost every day on my walk to the cafe, / under sun or cloud, its red / seeming lit from inside, a brightness / bold as the lipstick my mother wore
February 2022Another View
This morning the receptionist ushers me / into the Magnolia Room, reserved / for those receiving a “different type” / of mammogram, although I can discern / no obvious difference from the Dogwood Room, / where I waited last week for the usual sort, / the one about which my friends and I joke / and pretend we schedule as casually as a teeth-cleaning.
January 2022My Father’s Messages Erased From My Answering Machine
“Hi, it’s just me.” This might be the only phrase I know for sure / was on the years of messages the phone company erased / when they — inexplicably — changed my number. / The messages are gone, but the grief is still there, / ripe, a fullness I’m glad I possess. We think we want grief / to pass, but what would I do if it were gone, / like the messages, irretrievable?
January 2022
