Poems

Crumbs — all that’s left of my coffee cake. Plates clatter as they’re loaded in the dishwasher. Ashtrays on the bar. When Hopper painted Nighthawks he didn’t intend to evoke loneliness —a waiter, two men in suits, a woman considering…

I learned from my mother, passed down from her mother, how to hold inside me a great ocean of sadness because the world is a cruel and inhospitable place. At the age of fifteen, I first told her I didn’t…

A horse who cannot run is just the fallacy of a horse. Most nights, I shovel familiar names into my mouth like lovers,

love. Even if I do love, I will never marry. Even if I do marry, it won’t

You hit the jackpot and I was angry at you. Lucky, lucky you. I forgot about your mother’s tumor, the fingertip edging the light switch of her pituitary gland.

Forgive yourself. If it’s hard, start small: throwaway thing you said in passing that’s kept you sheet-thrashing all night. Stack of coupons you let expire; waves uncaught when you came in early despite offshore wind.

Once I read the best poem ever and dropped the book in the tub. Don’t say I’m not willing to risk it all for love. I pulled the book out sopping wet and read it anyway the pages translucent as…

today, a man embarrassed himself: why don’t you write a poem about it? he said, voice interrupted by guffaws as i walked by, tired of being caught between humans, uninspired by a conversation about the fda and medical technology.

On May 6, 2025, the South Carolina Board of Education voted to remove 10 books from all public schools for all grade levels. This brings the total to 22 books removed or restricted statewide in South Carolina public schools.

a mother calls to me and asks if i am her son’s partner. in her house, my laughter is careless and unpoised.

Once I walked deep into the woods of my body where a cow was softly lowing and the sun was setting over a lake filled with swans.