Three Poems

what if i kill the stars first

when a medical document asks my marital status

i write, trying not to get my hopes up about sunlight

that’s what it feels like even in the fuck me state

some bleach-white beach in florida where i lived

on bourbon with a co-conspirator after the abortion

pale as uncooked pasta promising i’m typically

a more patient trainwreck but when it comes to

manned space travel you’re a wormhole to andromeda

and i’m a kindergartener who skipped swimming lessons

mussed mascara mentioning your wife to my therapist

wishful thinking is what they call it when an anemone

clenches shut around the wrong fishhook

and yes, i’m beginning to resent it, the east coast

incandescent smirk at every turn of my time-hop

toward what the ocean misses most: the skid

mark of still believing in devils just for the

single cell of it, headlights pointed past the

capsize, pretending that smell isn’t smoke

bashed / unabashed

last night’s dive bar patio 

spotting some bro eye- 

dropping tincture into  

an abandoned beer 

and you’re all, put a treat  

in my bag, bloody guy 

flashback to toddler’s  

first cognizant halloween 

that’s what you actually said 

shirley temple ringlets 

bouncing for a neighbor 

with a cleaver thru his head 

risk-take settings only 

ever stay in bed or  

summon demons 

stories your mother  

loves to tell－so seldom 

so you let her, sipping 

soda water wishing it  

were something stronger 

there is a modicum of  

comfort, though, in knowing  

you were always someone 

supposedly worth quoting 

like, look, a little vulgar  

monkey, terrified eternally  

until exactly when it should be 

and here we thought  

there was a chain link missing 

when it was right here all along 

nooner neruda

you tell me over lunch hour 

coffee you want to do to me 

what spring does to the cherry 

trees and i’m immediately like 

check, please, not as in rejection  

but rather hurry, we have only 20 

minutes to make spring happen 

brutal blooming the way the  

statues can only pretend to 

alabaster hammer unentered 

come find me undulating  

under a park bench

there is no sense waiting  

on a groundhog shadow, is there?  

little marvel, a motel room  

might as well a mausoleum  

when the season is this brief 

before that summer stench  

of cafe trash, everything  

that doesn’t keep