“That Which Catches Light” has advanced past the school and district stages of the National PTA Reflections competition.
“if i am with you” earned second place in the international Confessions Literature Confess 2025 competition with the subject “the distance between us”.
An unreleased poem, “In the Fire, I Belong” has been accepted for publication in The Minnesota Review, a Duke University Press journal of critical and creative writing, forthcoming in issue 107.
Neatly packaged
The critics build their little forts,
preparing their beige, bland retorts
which, of course, they’ll use
to keep you neatly packaged
for shipping, easily managed.
They step back,
and as it should,
the scale makes them dizzy.
But then they forget to look closer,
where we find ourselves busy.
They forget that the world was built
for one simple, brave desire;
to tend our small, very human fires.
Aka our mission,
the whole damn composition,
split into manageable parts.
Why bother with golden schemes?
The world was built for one messy, brave,
and ridiculous dream.
Multiplied.
To stand in the shadow of the infinite night.
And be, for a moment,
absurdly bright.
Patch of lovely grass (sonnet version 1)
Your pulse is just a high-stakes, predatory loan,
A strobe light’s frantic glitch
In a collapsing pit, so leave the "shoulds" alone—
Those leaden boots that make your spirit itch.
Stop watering the plastic, look at the crowd:
A billion ghosts all clutching
Their leaking bowls, wondering (quiet or loud)
Where the soup went, while they were judging.
The soil is a blind and neutral gut
That mulches down the CEO and the creep,
The Great, the Who?, the "I-wanted-to-but."
They're all the same shade of clover, six feet deep.
F*ck it, the lease on your breath is ending. Don’t be pinned.
Go graffiti your name on a passing gust of wind.
A patch of manic, lovely grass
Your pulse, a high-interest loan
of carbon and spit;
A frantic strobe light
in a collapsing pit.
Kick off the shoulds,
those leaden, orthopedic boots.
Stop watering your plastic at the roots.
Why offer a no
vacuum-sealed and dried
To a joy that’s finally hitched a ride?
Among a billion ghosts
in rented skin,
Clutching leaking bowls,
still wondering where the soup has been.
And the soil, yes,
a blind, impartial, gluttonous gut;
Digesting the Great and the Who? and the What?
It mulches throne and beggar’s cup
Into a patch of manic, lovely grass.
Don’t worry,
the prince and the fool
are the same shade of clover,
Once the lease on their breathing
is officially over.
Take a breath, take a breath;
Life’s the only thing that’s not like death.
Graffiti your name on a passing gust of wind;
The only sin is staying neatly pinned.
Ignite the ego, the hemp,
the existential spark
(Light a match under your own backside
if your world seems too dark);
It’s too cramped (ouch!) in the coffin
to start playing the part.
One day
You’re going to die one day,
so start acting in such a way
that you don’t have to apologize
when you’re having fun, even if there are a million eyes
on you.
They are people too.
You’re going to die one day
so do me a favor, okay?
Live, fight,
Take your canvas, your candle and burn it f***ing bright.
So that no matter what they say
the path that you take, you can call your way.
Who doesn’t love someone with a little fire?
Rub them wrong, let them declare you the fool.
Trust me, you can afford to raise your chin a little higher.
the ravenous bloom
A flower heaves up from the silt,
a soft violence split from the dark
without a word of apology.
It rises because it is hungry,
and for a heartbeat
it is the only thing
the sun can see.
It exhales.
a debt,
not a scent.
The bloom,
a surrender
to the light
that invited it out.
Why?
Because the sky gives only
what it intends to take back.
Is this the measure?
That beauty is the briefest distance
between birth and burial?
A burn in the eye
that asks to be remembered?
We do not love the rose.
We love the vanishing.
We are drawn to the flame
because we are made of wax.
Stand still too long,
and it will eat the air
around your lungs.
You will chase it
into tall grass.
You will reach out your hand.
But can you ever catch
what is already
turning to heat
in your grasp?
worldscapes
it clicks into place while everything else moves
click
click
c l i c k
like bones rearranging themselves inside your chest
it moves away while another moves close
so close you can feel its gravity
sucking your fingers through themselves
you cannot hold
you cannot
cannot hold what is already
falling through your hands
the sand is screaming
your hands are bleeding
and still
you try
there are too many moving parts
for either of us to love just one
every focus a blur
melding
m e l d i n g
MELDING
every hand you clutch
vanishes
as soon as you move one
the rest
rotates
erupts
slips
laughs
at you
at you
at y o u
and the quiet truth
is that you
you collapsing little observer
you think you're watching
(I did too)
we witnesses
gnawing our own shadows
the worldscape
worldscape
w o r l d s c a p e
doesn’t notice you
it doesn’t stop
it doesn’t forgive
it doesn’t even care
it only moves
moves
m o v e s
and you remain
the one thing
that cannot
quite
keep up.
if nothing stays,
what will you hold?
“i wish i had more time”
“more time”
cannot be granted
to someone who does not use it
in the first place.
if i am with you
days fold inward upon each other,
imploding yet exploding; incomplete and fragmented.
seen but not felt;
whirling,
raging,
but – if i am with you,
sunlight slips through the trees
and leads the dance of silhouettes across the soil.
it is golden –
like you
and your voice
uprooting doubt,
silencing the muttering leaves above.
the soul speaks
a thousand words –
yet the voice captures so little
while the rest are lost
to infinity.
even so,
i feel you;
your ebb and flow.
but when the wind dies
and the trees are still,
the last echoes of eden fade
to shadow.
the sun sets
ever so softly;
rainbow ink
spilling upward into the heavens.
cue the obsidian drapes falling over the canvas,
as lofty ideals
subside to cold repose
but the light has not left yet.
with you,
the soft pinholes in the sky open up
and the stars sigh.