• Teenage

    girlish, warm-blooded
    sheep in wolf’s clothing

    eyes glisten with a shred of world
    pools for tongues to lick

    youth spilling over the walls
    home in a bubble or a cloud

    limbs like railings to be gripped
    hips like bannisters to slide down

    eventually,
    nowhere else to go

    house creaks like a dying thing
    and my hands grow tired of skin

    and you cut your hair
    and i gasp at the death

    how could we have aspired
    to be anything for each other?

  • Water poem

    Lie open on the rocks
    To cool the body down

    What we lost lives here
    Among broken cliffs
    And sea spray
    Where everything is slick
    And ready, with mouth wide

    Is it enough to be mystified by the air?
    To love it?

    The moment always wants
    To be free of all the others,
    Twisting with its great shoulders
    To face the sun

    Torture of yesterday,
    Stones cast like dreams
    Into the ocean, lost to the swirl of the gods.

  • We put the car in neutral

    Your face looks different now
    Cast under the shade of time
    Instead of under the curve of my hands,
    You can see it plainly
    That your life is a pinprick
    Or a quarter for a slot machine,
    That we’ve been breathing in fumes
    All this time and never noticed.
    The house shifts on its loose plates
    You lick your lips in the kitchen
    Chapped, forgotten things
    We don’t know what to do with the stove
    When to add the salt, or how much
    But here we are, making a memory
    Here we are, making a home
    Here we are, thrashing like two fish,
    Throwing ourselves onto the deck
    Wondering where our bodies went.