Poetry

Vermilion in May

in

Meadow grass moves

To rhythms of earth, whispering

I can't, I thought

Then nothing.

Built up like water, bubbling

About to burst and whistle.

An oriel will discover grape jelly

Left out by neighbors,  noting

Always to return for more. 

To Learn About a Drummer

in

Is to learn about the soul

Or the dirt at which feet touch

Down and grasp at pebbles, particles,

Trash, and breathe out the smell of poison

As it spreads from the diaphragm

To every finger tip of a tree.

Chess, checkers

Makes me vomit

Like when a drummer plays without

The passion of a thousand sons

Born of narcissistic parents,

Alcoholics, cops, colonizers,

Crippling anxiety asking why try

When you’ll always disappoint your ancestors,

Not just the living, not just me.

Wherever you look

Is someone looking right back

At all that you aren’t, and will never be. 

This is what it feels like

To be lost and never alone

Regardless of what they say

In the tabloids.

Eight Legs Ain't Enough

in

That’s why I stopped killing spiders in my twenties
Understanding my protector, my dream
The power lines in the northwest quadrant
Of this city are fused
To my ancestors’ crease, giving life
Like a packet of brown sugar
At the C&O Diner in the desert
Dance with me, like tarantulas
And celebrate the boats that brought us home
Not guided by man, but by water
And the moon, by the insects that power
This planet when no one’s watching
Break down, listen: the locusts bringing back whatever
They could find in the fields
I want to be the cellar spider that drowned
Knowing what was possible
And still giving up

*originally published in The Garlic Press (2025)

In My Sleep

in

Tuesday comes every seven days, I thought
Like a therapist in training—but I wasn’t waiting
She died in my sleep
Like the first frost or
All the matriarchs in our family
Like a child, afraid of my own fingernails
I laid in the field overgrown with goldenrod
Someone could use this, I thought
Although I didn’t know
If it would help

*originally published by The Garlic Press (2025)

It's Worth It

in

Because I’m dreaming in blue

Sweat sweet, tires worn, worried when

The dog stops eating human food

But film is dying, you said

Another tornado watch sirens go

The Quaker Oats factory closed again

Cult leather cut, fabric sewn

Take your oath at the door and remember

We don’t know you

Paid for in a drop of blood

Half-finished is never-started

Scripts poems stories, a memoir!

It’s worth it, you said

When you’re not dead yet

A heart on velvet stairs

The sun leveled with dirt

Feel the air static

Between fingers wet from rainwater

And rosemary, reduced marinara

White flour softened with rest

* originally published in Southern Champaign County Star Today

When We Fall

in

I have lizards in my house

Like the side of Grecian urn

Move your body like the blood

Off an ascot, made for moonwalkers

Ruined on the forth of July

Another month in paradise

And I’ll ride my motorcycle

From Michigan to Rio, stopping

Wherever there’s a beach

Bar bands and blood

Breathing free without cigarettes

At twenty one

*originally published in Southern Champaign County Today (2025)

I Will Find You, pt. 2

in

They wouldn’t give me your transcripts

Because I’m not you

Even though you died in October

Twenty-four years before I was born

They said you were in key club

And played football, you were taking

Intro philosophy and general psych

I wonder how far you got

After practice, driving north

I wonder how dark it was

In the rearview, when you flipped

I play your guitar still

Even though I don’t know how

It’s all I have left without your picture

Or a prayer

To fall for

Where did you go?

Mom won’t tell the truth

But I finally saw your face today

In my eyebrows

*originally published in Southern Champaign County Today (2025)

South on Poplar

in

Every nightmare starts the same: I’m walking south on Poplar. The grass overgrown— no one lives here anymore. As I approach the yield that forks the asphalt road, I can see around the elms into my childhood bedroom. Shutters open but the blinds are drawn. The red door with a gold handle is closed, the driveway empty.  I step between the crabapple trees that border the lawn, and notice a figure in the living room window. The bricks of this house are darker in my memories. When I get to the door, it is locked.

And it always will be.

Garth's

in

We met Kyle at Garth’s

They were close in age

But more like father and son

To see him you had to look up

Passed the boulders behind peacocks

And roosters tucked away

So the mountain lions couldn’t find them

Pulling to the center of a drum

He’s probably watching a movie

Or something but where does truth begin?

Like when a lightning bolt strikes sand

Bone and coral make up Earth’s gravel lots

After poachers march on

Take the baking soda back to where it

Belongs because it too has a place here

And if you drink tea of this plant you know

Whether or not magnets even work

In water Ancient instruments made custom

From PVC pipe and fiberglass pulse

With the lava flowing beneath my feet

Pianos wrapped in plastic drift into dreams

And more dreams and it’s dark now

And every star is moving closer asking

If it’s the right time to press down and

Pull apart rock to reveal Truth’s end

If we haven’t met before

We have now

So follow me to the edge

And you’ll hear what’s been calling

All along

*originally published by The Horizon Magazine (2023)

I Never Met My Grandpa Charles

in

I never met my Grandpa Charles.

I heard he was a butcher

And a drunk and he cried

When they found Elvis.

He wrote secret letters

To his daughter estranged

Telling her how proud

He was and that he wished

Things were different.

But they weren’t, so

He stopped writing.

*originally published by The Horizon Magazine (2023)

When Silence Settles

in

Yellow buds blooming soon

Woven with grass not dried yet

Resting like a midwestern penguin

Surrounded by first world soy beans

Taxed in rows, how much

Gasoline will burn the barn down

To make it to the county line?

Despite the commercials—

Local love, pigskin is used for cooking

A blue heron, resting too

In brown water from another

Million miles of mud

Leave and return, the sun will glow still

awakened by wind

Sounds of water

Flowers reach trees

No ground ivy left

To hold them

*originally published in Southern Champaign County Today (2025)

To Be A God

in

Push mud without mathematics
Sludge, pus
All holes overflown
With humanity. We came here
And brought music
Told stories of gods
To the rumbling ravages torn
Cloth stained in earth
It will be centuries before I leave here
Forgotten promises lost
Beneath wooden wheels barely built
To function
Rain soaked structures made of rock
Bound to fall if pressed, believing
In prayer like a sea of dirt
Black between eyes, white
Every villager survived on roots
And lake water
If the sun ever comes back
I will find another planet
Made of rock
And take my stories with me

* originally pubished by BRUISER MAG (2023)