• if you were here, you’d be home

    There are two women who mistake me for their daughter. I go along, and accept apologies never meant for me. I say my father’s bank account looks fine- not to worry, he has a card now, we’ll have to go to the mall, and then we pray. A man hands me a baby doll, saying…

  • everything

  • the tigers and how they lived

    I want to start every poem I write resonating with the perseverant ache in my heart, echoing, “ow. …ow” like the words resemble it’s blood dripping out when I am actually bleeding internally. I am in so much pain, every day. This is not a poem I can write. It is a letter to myself.…

  • October

  • My dog

    Dear God protect her.

  • The shirts

    a poetry book for my daughter read across the table during breakfast another one, for me, later read laying on my lap out loud intimacy is veins traced spit in the sink guitar while the morning doves sing talking while doing dishes  bedtime stretches spontaneous foot rubs and dancing in the rain during a thunderstorm…

  • The Last Tuesday

    I have enough trash bags and joints, boxes, & tape, friends. I’ll use them all and get out in time before they’re gone. It’s been three years six months, & seven days too late. I can finish smoking these in five minutes. Deep breaths. I’m finally drinking from a wine glass, no jelly jar. The…

  • fuck around

    I loved a man once. He died. I sat with the mother  of his child  by a dam and  she handed me some of him  in a small jelly jar with a t-shirt and a note  he left behind  for me. The thing is  when I smelled the shirt- inhaled it like a nitrous balloon …

  • The campfire

    I am camping  grateful there is service this year finally up in these woods  people would say it keeps them disconnected  from the “real world” alas I have school work to do, it’s poetry and the grandfather in the site across the way is playing Joni Mitchell, singing along listening for his grand-babies crying while…

  • Lawrence

    the tea I handed him-Constant Commentafter spaghetti dinnershis old, dusty box fanin the bedroom, one Juneoscillating our pillow talkabout life and death, happy.He was my oak tree.We once walked thirteen milesbarefoot on the shoremy daughter splashingthrough the imprints of his feetor being carried.Buddy, by my sideif I ever thought he wasn’the met my eyes.I’m drinking…