Category: Poetry

At the movies

Tissue paper face held over a match. Night dangles from rafters, perfume   chemicals burn. Daylight burns like faces on the screen skin-soft, bleached   and bloody. Picture this: grey background, rose buds flailing. Narrow angles   abstract and brief … Read More

by on

Sacramento, 2018

The sidewalk outside is wet. So is my swing hanging from the orange tree branches, and my pink boots by the door that hurt.  I like to draw the same picture over and over, a different bedroom from mine scratched … Read More

by on

it is late october and i thought i was falling in love three weeks ago

(There’s something off about this moment, a beauty mark on the day. I’m feeling small and alone, far away from home and homesick for my car.)   it is late october and a discarded napkin  swirls in the wind, imitating … Read More

by on

Sentence Starters

We haven’t learned the right tense: the cliché of red leaves falling, your choice  of hazelnut cold  foam atop my cold brew, that dead squirrel we mourned for because despite the newborn tents we couldn’t have brought her back. Why … Read More

by on

Said, softly

Said, softly   October crushes down, squeezing the juice of summer and all the faces are new fresh new Mouths fallen heaps of gloss and lips  Sit. Sleep.  October crushes, and leaves curl on asphalt like fingers.    The leaves … Read More

by on

We need to arrête

We need to arrête    all of this liquid: bridges lawns psets towels gmail  caffeine with the face of   a dog  barking in  the north  courtyard alongside    teeth digging  into flesh like   that subtle ascent of  adjectives … Read More

by on

After zooming out

After zooming out this afternoon    that held focused possibilities like a hand reaching into the backlit arteries of a bokeh   I filtered my reflections through your shutter and tore off Fuji film rolls from your skin   still … Read More

by on

A Memento of Nintendo

When one thinks of a ‘game,’ hears its notes playing and effects sounding,  Like a pot smashing or a brick bashing, When one smells a game,  The cellophane of a case, or the rubber of an analog stick, When one … Read More

by on

Freshman year she called, crying

Freshman year she called, crying We’ll never know what it was or  how it came to be. She never showed  the signs on her stomach and the  signs she wore long on her face  were those of the boy hands … Read More

by on

A Horse Walks Into a Bar

A horse walks into a bar. The Bartender says, “Why the long face?”   “Well,” the horse says, “it’s my life.” “What about your life,” the bartender says, “What’s the story?” “That’s just it,” says the horse,  “I don’t have … Read More

by on

listen for green anemoia

twenty minutes from the center of the city once rice fields that my grandmother admired each morning whispering to dragonflies in the cup of her palm  squint at night and see cold stars tearing away the horizon motorcycles and black … Read More

by on

Bienvenidos (go home)

The pilot gave all of the instructions twice,  once in English and once in Spanish. I had never heard “amarre el cinturón de seguridad” from that crackling airplane speaker.   It was so much like just flying to a different … Read More

by on