Poems

The Watcher Somebody is watching from the far side of the street,I have clocked him three consecutive days in the same heatof afternoon, same corner, same arrangement of his posture,a man-shaped fact that every explanation fails to foster.I checked the windows twice and got the double-bolt installed,I mapped the sightlines from his corner to mine, […]

The Wellness Industry They’re selling you the fear as much as they’re selling you the cure,The specific anxiety about your body’s impure,Condition that only their specific product line will fix,The wellness industry and all its marketing tricks. The gut health and the cleanse and the specific stack,Of supplements that claim to give your missing function

The Wallpaper Wches Me Sleep I haven’t blinked in three days, afraid the shadows will move againThe mirror’s cracking on its own, or maybe it’s just laughing when I shaveI tried praying once,but the voices inside just said “we’re not taking messages”My toothbrush disappeared, so I licked the sink clean and called it victoryEvery window

The ViewingThey propped him up in the casket like a display,the suit he never wore in life buttoned the wrong way,the tie a color he would have refused, the handsfolded around a rosary he never used, the bands of the wedding ring still on the finger, shining clean,and the face they made for him is

The Upstairs Neighbor Moved Out They lasted four months above our bedroom,Then the resignation letter came at high noon,Taped to our door, said I can not endure another night,Of whatever you two are doing, it is not right. That a human can make those sounds and I have tried earplugs,I have tried white noise and

The Urban Distance In a city vast and wide, two lovers strive to coincide,Their lives entwined through busy streets where every moment barely meets,Her calls unanswered late at night, his work demands a constant fight,In each missed glance they drift apart,lost within separate reveries of the heart. She sits alone in candlelight, waiting for his

The Unobserved OrbitA single date bleeds on the calendar in a room gone cold and still.Light crawls through the glass like it forgot what it came to find.I study the cracking paint—a geography no one charted,the hourglass emptying grain by grain. No card arrives.No one remembers the sun makes another passaround a star that never

The Unfair Currency There’s a currency traded that nobody admitsIt moves through the world in the commerce of hitsAnd misses you get by your face and your frameThe unfair currency nobody namesOut loud in polite conversation but knowsThe unfair currency everybody shows The unfair currency of beautiful skinThe unfair currency getting you inThe door and

The Twisted Sheets NarrativeThe sheets wake up like paper after rain,creased with the evidence we couldn’t hide—a rumpled atlas under lamplight, mapping whereyour breath met mine and stayed inside.I read the wrinkles like a witness;each fold a clue the light can’t hide.Your perfume and my sweat trade places,and I grin at what the cotton won’t

The Underground Community The forest above the ground is beautiful and clear,but the forest underground is the apparatus here,that holds the whole thing up and keeps the trees in conversation,the underground community is the original foundation. The underground community, roots and fungal web,the underground community, at the flow and ebb,of season and of drought and