Poems

Typhus Letters In the letters from the trenches they described the itch,The body louse in the seams of the uniform’s switch,From woolen warmth to the vector of the rickettsial spread,The typhus that moved through the armies of the dead. Napoleon’s campaign dissolved in the Russian cold and the,Typhus that preceded the enemy by three,Months and […]

Trouble Wears Her PerfumeI can smell her from across the room—something dark and warm cuts through the smoke,finds me the way a bloodhound finds a wound,wraps around my chest and starts to choke. Not the kind that kills, but the kind that makes you gripthe table edge, swallow hard, prayshe comes closer so the strangling

Too Much Is Never Enough 2There was a hole where my conscience should’ve lived.I filled it with everything I couldn’t fit inside a dream. My father said the meek inherit. I said let them have it.I’ll take the earth and leave the meek to manage. Boardrooms thick with handshakes, promises like tissue paper —I collected

Threshold of YesterdayI wake to footprints in dust where stillness slept,and there—a door painted in moonlightthat wasn’t here before.Its frame bleeds cold into the hallway,a wound torn through familiar walls. I press my palm to its surface,feeling distant murmurs coil under the varnish.The rusted knob turns with a groanlike something dying,spills a breath of rot

This Dawg Bites Back Cold tile kissed feetNight chewed the glassAsh lined my grinRust filled my chestYou called me pet I heard the jokeBehind your teethYou tossed me bonesThen watched me starveYou loved me bowed You loved me hushedYou loved that chainAcross my throatMy bowl stayed dryYour boot spoke first My jaw stayed shutTill hunger

Their Life, My PoisonThe black glass of the phone glows like a demon’s eye inside the dark.I’m hunting for a reason to spark a bitter spark.I watch the images of men who own the world and all its goldwhile I’m sitting in the wreckage of a record getting old. Their women look like plastic saints

Thief in the ChapelI watched you build the fire from scratchwhile I held the matchand called it mineclaimed every ember you coaxed from nothingwore your smoke like a trophy on my skin You were bleeding knuckles and midnight oilI was the signature at dawnstealing your exhaustion, your brillianceyour goddamn war I’m the thief in the

The White Hawk and the Heavy Sheet The sun is a predatory bird circling the pineswhile I lie within the wreckage of the linenThe neighborhood is a sequence of fencesand the sound of the world ending behind the hedgesI am the technician of the pause and the lord of the unmade bedWe were the youth

The Woman Who Raised HimShe worked three jobs and never let them see it in her face,the pantry bare but somehow always full enough,no charity from neighbors, no handouts from the priest,she kept the worst things locked behind her teeth. There were mornings she would not describe—decades later, still—when the heat cut off in winter

The Whistleblower He worked at the bank for twelve years before he copied,The client list and the account data to a thumb drive,He walked out on a regular afternoon and stopped it,At the journalist doorstep with the information alive. The whistleblower left with the evidence in hand,The whistleblower broke the confidentiality strand,The whistleblower gave the