While out at Bullman’s Pizza with Ty and Caroline
to celebrate the job offer my mother watched
her most recent ex-husband arrive with a woman

miss the lake back home
so I drove to the ocean
mussels always taste like the waters they’re from

They have boarded up the place, emptied out the popcorn machines, and the carpet stinks of butter and mud as it is torn from the flooring.

When a cat comes to lay at your feet
you never ask why, but you do
hold still for as long as you possibly can

the ground
into being, what does that say about farming?

They tell you grief comes with permissions,
a hall pass, an extension, a moment's reprieve.

I’m trying to get into a life of hedonism
but I honestly skew more towards prude.

I find him in the kitchen making sandwiches, as men do, not with marmalade but with mandarins.

Love Poem for the Neoliberal Age

I don’t want to be radicalized by terror.
I want to feed mourning doves
from the palm of my hand in spite of it.

Mud and Lotus

Reading passages in the back seat
in a parking lot
after dark.

objective truths??? objective truths.

like any fable your story
begins with a cup of soup
signifying goodness. positivity. as in:
the audience is prepared
for an unhappy ending.

Accidental Summoning, Paris Metro

before I was told the unspoken rule
about not looking people in the eyes,
you were there on the bench at Oberkampf

Self-Care Saturday

My knowing-better loops elbows
with fuck-it-I-don’t-care
& we choose a linen dress
that shows the silhouette of our ass

Help Wanted

Can you help me find somebody to help me?
Somebody to love? Somebody to fix
a sink who won’t overcharge me? Enlarge
me? Make love to me as if waxing a car?

Two Poems

"Diorama of A Life I Never Lived"
"How I Got Rid of My Mississippi Accent"

Spirits and Divine Forces

I’ve got the God-eye and shit,
he said in his ashwagandha t-shirt.

The Fig Tree

We have figs this year
leading up to the weeks of your passing.

All my life, I knew trees that were barren,
ever since you planted them.

Three Poems

“I Am Composing a Song”
”Incompatible”
”That Ancient Village”