Poems

The Kitchen Garden We built the kitchen garden after the second recovery,the whole street together in a kind of discoverythat the act of growing something past the emergencywas the work of making permanence out of temporary. The kitchen garden is the community’s declarationthat the crisis does not end the aspiration.The kitchen garden is the place […]

The Joke That Didn’t Land I set it up with surgical precision—three weeks of shower-testing the decisionof the punchline, the timing calibratedto the second, the setup elaboratedacross the dinner table like a manwho knows exactly what he’s doing. The planwas sound. The execution: confident.The silence that arrived: magnificent. The joke that didn’t land—I diedup there

The Joke as Prayer I tell the joke the way a priest would say the words,with intention and with reverence for what the telling affords,the joke as prayer, the prayer as joke, both reaching toward the same,the moment of connection where the separate become the frame. The congregation at the comedy club is not so

The Influencer TripSeventeen influencers landed at a resortdesigned for the lens,a place where the light hits just rightand the pool glows turquoise for the feed. The brief was simple:three posts daily,five days,and authenticity—which meant don’t mention the NDAthat forbade them to namethe competitors’ products by name,or veer from the themes outlined:adventure-meets-luxury,leaving the grind behind. They

The Itch It lives beneath the seventh layer down,too deep to scratch and too persistent to drownin antihistamines or willpower or booze.The itch is not the skin. The itch is in the fusebox of the nervous system, crossed and sparking hot,a signal saying something is wrong with what I have gotwired between my brain and

The Immigrant Who Swore He swore the oath in a courthouse with a hundred others in the row,He had waited eleven years for that specific show,Of the judge and the flag and the words that meant the door was finally clear,And he was standing on the other side of the frontier. The immigrant who swore

The Hunger That Never Clocks Out Most men have an off switch for the appetite at night,a point at which the hunger says enough and that’s right,the body sending signals up the chain to say,we’re full now, we have what we need, good day,I don’t receive those signals clearly, or at all,my appetite is not

The Imaginary Friend Report Card My son had a friend nobody could seeStandard childhood phenomenonAte dinner with us, sat in the empty chairHad a place setting and a bedtime Normal, the pediatrician saidHealthy imagination, social developmentLet it run its courseMost children outgrow it by seven My son is thirty-two nowAnd the chair is still pulled

The Hollow Man’s ParadeHe marches with the living in their daily processional,keeping to the rhythm and the pace, confessionalonly in the privacy of no one asking and not telling —the hollow man in the parade, the empty bell still ringing. The city has its pageantry of purpose and direction,the morning stream of bodies moving in

The House That Hates You The realtor said “full of charmand potential” with a smile that had too many corners in itThen the floorboards screamedand bit my ankle in the time it took to get a minute inThe walls exhale black mold into the room I paid a deposit forAnd the toilet has been hissing