Poems

Grey Before the Alarm The ceiling knows my eyes by now—we’ve had this conversationsince somewhere past the junction between the dark and dark-adjacent,the water stain above the baseboard holds its shape the way a scar does,personal and permanent, no escaping the applauseof one’s own mind at three AM performing its greatest show.The darkness thinned to […]

Hair Transplant Journey I used to run my palm through airwhere hair once lived, then laugh it off like I was sparedBut every flash lit up my thinninglike a courtroom, and I felt the verdict in the stareI learned the hat as daily armor, learned the angle, learned to hide the wearA joke lands and

Graveyard Shift Pallet Jack Hymn Clock says nearly midnight when I badge through the steel gray door,fluorescent hum buzzing like it’s chewing on my coreFloor cold under rubber soles, forklifts whining in the backlike tired metal dogs circling the same old trackSupervisor on the mezzanine scrolling his glowing screen,doesn’t know my name, just my number

Grave GoodsThey bury them with things in every culture—the coin for Charon, the bow, the quiver,the food and tools against a future darkas any mouth, the loaded things for the crossingof whatever river waits. We put his pocket knife inside the casket,the paperback of books he never finished,the things that were himself inside a basketof

God Open Mic God signed up for the open mic at the end of time,took the slot between a ventriloquist and a mime,stepped up to the podium with the universe in notes,and delivered thirty minutes of material that floats. He opened with creation, which he said was just a bit,a setup for a punchline that

Gold Teeth and Empty Rooms My grandfather left me a hardware store and thirty thousand in the bank,he said keep the lights on, keep the people straight, and never let it tank,I sold it inside a year for three times what the building said it’s worth,and spent the profit on a sports car and a

Glitter, Grease, and Bad Decisions She showed up drunk in fishnets, stole a smoke with her tongue from my lipsSaid, “I’m not here to flirt, I’m here to fuck or fight”—and I hoped it was bothSmelled like sugar, sin, and someone else’s cologne —tasted like every mistake I’d make twiceBackse of a stranger’s car, panties

Ghosts that Know My Title I lit a mch I couldn’t holdWched it burn down bridges coldAnd never meant a goddamn lineI left love in motel sheetsNow I walk through empty barsLooking for faces behind the scarsThese ghosts, they know my titleThey trace my skin with blameEvery “fuck you” I now dreadThey haunt my nights

Footprints in the Ceiling I wake with my mouth half open, tasting yesterday’s fearlike pennies on the tongue, and the dark feels newly armedThe house holds its breath at the edges, then exhales a thin wood-creak,the kind that says a stranger learned your charmCeiling plaster looks innocent in daylight,yet at 2 a.m. it turns to

Fuckin’ Electric She arrived like a voltage spike in the dead and undefended middle of night,Everything I’d been conserving for later igniting simultaneously in the light,Current running straight through me from the very initial moment of contact,Fuckin’ electric — and there’s absolutely no retrieving that. A thunderstorm doesn’t consult the calendar before it comes rolling