Amaretto Morning

Coffee and skim milk foam and

cherry-almond liqueur, a bit of hair of the dog

swirl once, two sugars.

Curl up on the office couches-

brown plaid checked with maroon, heinous things-

sit and warm cold shoulders with early sunlit windowpanes

leaning in until we hear the glass creak in protest.

Trade vowels and consonants, Venice for Rome

stories about getting lost and getting found and

falling asleep at the symphony;

somebody find me an electric guitar, I mean really,

this is absurd.

Gossip about the pros and cons of

leather jackets versus button-downs:

One leaves you wanting more, one leaves you period.

The right side of fifty and the right side of twenty-one

cross invisible bridges at nine am

towards the white hot center.

Deliverance

The women at the bubble mill slide paint

across glass faces made by the dozen

a pixel-by number operation

fragility begot by the fragile.

A man on a dragon invades Times Square

and all around chaos reigns by volume

tin soldiers rage with clash of steel and lead

in the center of the madness circle

Red-lipped Lady Life and Skeleton Death

cast lots for souls and court the end of time

The earth heats, grows molten, swallows tin men 

The bulls across the field sing with broken necks,

The cyprus trees lose form, collapse to ash,

The women do not look up from their work. 

Almost There

I should figure out how to forgive you.

After all you’re just an amalgam now,

a patchwork cloud of film reels

struck out in hues of cobalt, 

vaguely human in shape,

a conversation starter I pull out 

and dust off before parties. 

But

I remember sewing the ocean together with grains of sand, desperate to

pull closer to your shadow and you once cried out to me that it

was possible for us to outrun this wind turned rain but we

outran the wrong way, since the air wasn’t thinner where we

ended up but thick with salt and heat, heavy in the lungs and I can’t forget 

looking out across the islands for lamplight and

finding only fog and a love song. 

Slow Burn

There’s a reason I don’t drink vodka, even though it’s kind enough to spin the room for me and leave without the painful morning after. But last night I forgot. 

So I sat on the cracked linoleum floor of this apartment on Hartwick and did shots out of Dixie cups, chased with watered-down Sprite, and then

I was at some bar, drinking it drowned in Red Bull, listening to shitty house music and this frat boy telling me how he’s gonna inherit his father’s company one day and pretending not to notice

how low his hand kept slipping on my low rise jeans.

He was tan and tall and big and wrong but I danced with him anyway. 

Killed another few shots laced with green-apple-something and lost my earring somewhere between the bar and the dance floor when he leaned in and I leaned out,

thinking about how awful it is that you both wear the same cologne.

I know I said I wouldn’t, but

Vodka makes me miss you. 

Red Eye turns to Blue

I met a dreamer in Union Station

painting portraits with his toes

for spare change.

He has a private audition for the part

of Jean Valjean

on Broadway

Next week.

 The Metro train comes caterwauling

down the trackline with lights blaring

while kids in power ranger costumes

usher me back,

rescue me from imminent danger. 

One tells me he’ll be a real superhero someday.

A cop like his daddy,

same mustache too. 

The posh lady on the recording tells me to 

“Allow customers to exit” but 

rebel that I am,

I push inside to where the sticky orange seats

reek of twenty or thirty years’ brown-green grime,

the kind that sticks to library books

left to rot too long. 

I pop in my earbuds and fall asleep against the cool window on my way home. 

Necessary Part

We lean against each other like bookends,

mirror images down to our thoughts on the evening

perched on the shelf above the bar

screaming drinking songs

gratuitously out of tune. 

We drop ourselves into language

playing in it, drunkenly puddle jumping 

through nouns and verbs and made-up in-betweens

coating ourselves in dirty water and pencil lead.

You’ll play a nonsense tune on your beat-up guitar,

serenading me to sleep,

pretending things rhyme with my name. 

Incubus

Oh lover, lover, I have been calling for you,

deep in the dusking of the night just before dawn.

The air grows still and frosty,

holding it’s breath for the imminent sun and

I stare at the deep cracks in the ceiling,

naming the shapes the dusty watermarks make and

my twin bed feels big and empty.   

The sandman clambers through my open window,

tugs his hardest at my canthi,

begging for my submission

“It’s almost dawn, after all “ but

I will not follow where he beckons. 

Every settling in this haunted house gives me shivers,

I search the greying shadows for yours,

scouring the corners for your translucent smile and 

the red of my sheets mocks the blood in my veins,

rushing and reaching and remembering,

in the deadness. 

The Queen of Band-aids

I was born a sedentary cynic and I

have creaky bones and two decades on her but she

teaches me how to dance and how to cry and how to play and I 

have never known a more vivid world than the one that she 

dreams until it comes alive in her teddies across the bedroom floor. 

She is a diva that doesn’t suffer fools and I 

never really knew my worth until she

taught me how to love and how to laugh and how to let go and I 

will not forget her doll-hand’s desperate grasp around my finger. 

She is a daredevil comedian that’s scraped and bruised and I 

never really knew the meaning of comfort until she

curled up in my arms and fell asleep; 

breath trembling across my chest,

listening to my heartbeat. 

She doesn’t know she’s magic. 

Get me high tonight

I heard once that words are 

the most powerful drug ever known 

I’m not so sure but

I like this beat and the way you smell and

honey, I’m dead sober but I’ve been known

to do some stupid things for

the sake of some sugar poured on a little

thick by a voice low and soft and warm 

against that spot on my neck so paint a picture 

across the air with your breath of our 

intertwined bodies slicked with just 

enough sweat and the rough pads of 

your fingertips and the soaking wet 

sheets I’ll wrap my hands around and

how I won’t even know my own name just

the sounds and colors and that feeling a 

bird gets just as it free-falls to fly. 

Earthquakes

The thing about fault lines, is,

you can’t see them with the naked eye.

You walk around all casual-like, sure you up on solid ground 

tossing barbs and bombs and snide jokes and then 

the bottom falls out 

and it’s so freaking loud like the whole world is screaming and holy god what even was that

.

.

.

.

and then you sit

blinking and disoriented

wondering what the fuck you said or did

wondering what the fuck

just happened. 

Mustang

Let’s run somewhere.

There’s planes and trains and cars, let’s take what’s fastest and 

leave while the leavin’s good.

I’m no good at sittin’ still, never could understand the benefits of

building a solid foundation,

growing roots to me always felt a little

like being bound and gagged

except you’re a volunteer- Darlin’, that’s just insanity. 

Come run with me,

The closest I get to peace or to heaven with this restless soul of mine

is at eighty mph down some godforsaken highway

and wouldn’t you know it,

my passenger seat has a vacancy.