“How many crushed female bodies does it take
to dye a red dress red, a red dress draped
on a girl raised into a blue blue sky,
erected by her father against a sky blue
as the blessed virgin, her mantle softly falling?”
from my poem “Stain” up on The Pinch
“There was a time before thirst meant high,
meant first, ask your daughter, are you high?
Her first glucose test read HIGH,
the beginning of chronic, the beginning of
lasting a long time, the beginning of
a man, a bull, and a lion slither into a bar.”
from my poem “Chronic” up for issue 6 purchase on The Festival Review
“Van Halen’s “Panama” is not at all about Panama.
It’s about a race car or a stripper, or a race car and
a stripper, but either way, there’s nothing about the country
in the song, and that’s appropriate because ‘Panama’
was released in 1984, the year Orwell wrote we would all
be convinced that what we knew to be true was wrong.”
from my poem “In the Turn” up on The Rumpus
“We know everything’s a weapon. Best learn the truth
early. Sweetheart? Wake up. Your mouth is full of teeth.”
from my poem “evening : girl” up on SWWIM.
“Behind the bar, an old mirror is losing its silver, a spray
of dark stars, & in it, I don’t have to see myself as anything
but an obscurity. Not quite
connected.”
from my poem “Waking Up Alone” up in The Los Angeles Press
“Temptation of knowledge put Eve in a box,
and this tradition forced us to swallow
sin in a neatly wrapped package, delicate throats
exiled, bared to the boot.”
from my poem “Fault Lines” up on Anti-Heroin Chic.
"Medusa slaps her palms together,
seizes the worn wooden handle
of her sledgehammer, tests its satisfying
heft, swings its heavy head at the one
who turned to stone long ago"
from my Best of the Net nominated poem "Medusa Swings Her Hammer" up on the Whale Road Review site.
"Hands slide down my smooth sides, fingers press praise
into skin. Outside, the river rolls on as though you, seraph,
are not burning here, as though your touch does not strip
me bare, as though I am not scorched by your voice"
from my poem "Dwell" up on the Zingara Poetry Review site.
"It’s hotter than hell, and we’re flyin’ down that two-lane,
windows rolled down, me in your college, turned-back ball-cap,
you with one hand on the wheel, one hand on my…Let’s pretend it’s a truck
you’re driving"
from my poem "Shut Up and Kiss Me" up on the EMRYS' Medium site.
"Dear Ted,
I have no idea what to do with chicken hearts and
artichoke hearts and strawberries shaped like hearts and
conversation hearts. And…I’m starting to take
the mystery ingredients personally."
from my poem "Letters to Ted Allen" up on the Barrelhouse website in their "POP Love!" special section.
"Hold her down. It’s better if she can’t breathe, a waste
of breath. When she faints, waspish, the device
is a couch with a low back. Trigger ligaments."
from my Pushcart nominated poem "Girltrap" up on the Scoundrel Time website.
"Every boy she’s ever fucked
without a condom scientists say
peppered her
peppered her with his DNA"
from my poem "Chimera" up on the Yes Poetry website.
"On the soft lamplight dawn of the day you leave me,
I have you. A last match tucked in an inside pocket.
We crook into the brash belly of bed,
twist into the rich whiskey grip of thighs."
from my poem "How a Living Organism Produces Light" up on the One website.
"Let’s drink until our hearts
forget we’ve been apart, forget that hearts
are just two-fisted vessels of muscle, wondrous
pumps."
from my poem "Your Mask is a Gift" up on the Cider Press Review website.
"When you’re 13 & U wake up with a body like
that,
your head don’t know,
but your body does."
from my Prince tribute poem "Freak" up on the Barrelhouse website.
"there is no one at the table in the image
stark against the blue sky at the top.
clear soaring soprano. I stand outside
the image in silence like a gash."
from my Tupelo Press 30/30 poem "The Sorrowful Lover Stands" up on Melancholy Hyperbole.
"Beneath the storm stippled surface, the manta ray’s great gills flex,
the iron grate of a furnace venting.
Flames lick and chew."
from my Randall Jarrell Prize winning poem "Failure to Obliterate" up on storySouth.
"Keep your shirt on,
she says,
and I know she means wait,
be patient, calm down,
but I can’t help but think
about what would happen
if I took my shirt off."
from "Keep your shirt on" up on Hobart.
"I imagine you cruising the boulevard at two
a.m. in your dead mother’s car, watching the girls
sway out of the bars, hands resting on the soft curves
of their girlfriends’ waists..."
from "Your Own Lecherous Heart" up on Waxwing.
"I want to kiss you, but
I open the car door, and it is raining.
I know the cloth seat will only keep our heat
for the amount of time it takes to unfold into the wet night
and you behind me."
from "Back Seat Event" up on Rappahannock Review.
"I push and twist the needle tip onto the pen designed for children;
the sharp punctures the rubber membrane of the small glass vial.
I pierce my daughter’s thigh, fatty enough for insulin."
from "Something I Know" up on Night Owl.