Category Archives: Poetry

When I cross the road
I feel like the world is staring at me:
the Porsche, a metallic silver
the Honda Civic, once white now covered
by dust and smoke
from the last California wildfire.
Smoke travels far.
Reaches the edge of the earth.

The crosswalk is the length of time
between heartbeats:
dangerously long, you could untangle earbud wires
before the next thump,
the heart of someone’s starving body
trying to get to the other side.

The pedestrian light flashes yellow when
I reach the sidewalk
and the Porsche roars behind me
like I exit the stage
and conduct the world back to life.

A laugh from outside the window
one floor down
light from a setting sun
cast onto a colorless room
grey and lighter grey
melts door handle into door
an exit never found
had it existed to begin with.
Situated at the edge of the earth, the end of time
there’s nothing to do but wait
for the curtain to be drawn,
blackness ticking off another day.
The ceiling is expanseless, like it fails to meet a corner,
yet surely there are walls
in this room
where “what comes next”
is eagerly forgotten.

The bridge stands only a few meters above the water
Aged with crippled wood and missing planks
A skyscraper, reaching from ground to sky and across the river bend,
to a side shrouded from sight.
A place of romantic coincidences
Where the soon-to-be high school graduate witnesses
a first ever meteor shower,
Where the newly wed brings her husband to a childhood memory
of flinging get-well letters into the water
before winding up as an inpatient for mental rehabilitation
Love cures all, so they say–so she tells him,
Where trees grow so tall the sun fades from existence
all shadow and fireflies
until you cross over, look back
and wait for your straggler to catch up.

Clasped hands, a stuffed penguin,
two memory foam pillows,
a couple strands of hair left behind,
chilled flesh against sheets
I can feel from shoulder to hip the line defining
a broad concave landscape, soft like Arctic marsh
your hand could sink down into it.
Poorly strung together dreams
interrupted by a growling stomach or
light vibration of a smart watch
beeping at 19% battery life
forgotten on a wrist,
I can form an invisible triangle from hip bone to belly button to hip bone
I can count the minutes until falling asleep again.

The dress code is: business pants and a sweater,
loose and grey, the text “Today I will do absolutely nothing”
across the front, each word a different font
Garamond to Times to Comic Sans.
It’s the kind of sweater you’d go to sleep in when the heater fails
the kind of pants you don’t want to wear under covers–
7 am Monday appropriate attire
when going-to-work suddenly becomes work-from-home
becomes “work from home”.
An outfit only exposed to your own eyes
but tomorrow
the socks on the ground, jacket hung across the chair
we re-wear for an audience.

Coming home to a peaceful quiet
except it’s not really home
rather an apartment, third floor bedroom
where the heat rises and roasts
at night, until suddenly you can’t breathe
and have to take a walk at 2 am downstairs,
bare feet against an icy hardwood floor.
Guess it’s not really quiet either
the air rebounding against a shut heating vent
a stymied roar
and the words from a partner’s lips
gentle and smooth, succinct yet meaningless,
as heavy as an “I missed you”
or a “why do you have to work so long?”
or a “do you need me to shut up?”
can get–
like dropping stones down your esophagus
plop into a hollow stomach
your own stone child too large to puke out.
Even so, gag reflex tickled,
you try and try.

Skin: the primary ingredient for layered masks
all laid out like a slideshow of stars
sparkling and determinedly isolated
until shuffled back together.
A compartmentalized living experience:
everyone gets a mask, no mask is shared.
What do you do when everyone’s skin is peeling?
Hang a pot under our chins,
a dreamcatcher where faces fall through
but what remains–
a curved eyelash, trapezoidal cut fingernail–
melted down and cleaned out
might be molded into a blinding mask again.
An endless night blanketed over our heads,
we all watch transfixed.

A secret keeper’s role–it’s not that difficult
hiding at the back of a cave
a scintillating light just at the mouth
the flicker of diamonds held together by
white gold on a 1.8k Tiffany ring
best protected when forgotten
or hidden among 30k rings.

A secret keeper keeps secrets, not promises
holds on to them, reaches out to them,
snatches them away into the cool, damp space
near the base of a mountain on the side that faces the sun
at 7 am every day, for 15 minutes, the most vulnerable time
for those who can’t bother to get out of bed,
the light
unable to penetrate half-open eyes
just may get stolen.

Of course, if the secret is out,
the debt can be exchanged in promises
which also come in shiny Tiffany rings
at the few-have-ventured-and-returned
deep end of the cave
an eternal search.

Kind of feels like three Philips Hue light bulbs
flickering on and off in different colors
like that banned Pokemon episode
that gave children seizures
but no one died I hope

because under this spasm of lights
controlled by a tap on a color wheel
on a smartphone
to a digital clock’s unseen ticking,
it feels like my time of dying.

Mouse clicking and laughter come from
a lover who games like dinner isn’t just
fifteen minutes around the corner,
head nodding under noise cancelling headphones,
fingers tapping at the keyboard of Alienware whose fans spin
louder than the clang
of clothing in the drying machine
softer than the buzz of electricity those bulbs
send my neuron to synapse to neuron,
frozen hands rubbing my frozen feet.

Like sleep seeps into your bones as you stare upward
because it’s a surrender to shut your eyes
the windows already shield against smoke,
just words and pictures left, inhibited by blue light,
gleaming and chanting and suddenly you’re dying
under heavy down covers with frozen feet, frozen hands.

We wake up to a red sky
the aftermath of a conflagration
like blood too fresh,
not yet crusted black.
It is a day of burning
the scent of smoke
like someone forgot
to turn off the heater
and left the house roasting.
Tomorrow, the sky will be
an off white
smothered rather than cloudy,
hiking plans thwarted
leaving miles of cars
driving up to the mall
but we hide under the covers
4 pm and it’s dark and cold
and a fire rages onward
from where the sky bleeds black.