i loved you more last time

Available in the Feb. 2015 edition of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine!

Schrödinger's Cat Call

Available in the July 2015 edition of Asimov's.

Ampersandcastles

Let’s build ampersandcastles
on a moat that’s made of words
with turrets turning clauses
where the arrowslits are heard

and a drawbridge joining predicates
from subjects made of stone
that punctuate the pillars
of the stories we call “home.”

Poetry

A small sampling of things I've written over the years that could arguably fall under the blanket of "Poetry." Much of the poetry you see here was originally published on Five By Five Hundred, and you can also find my stuff in upcoming issues of Asimov's magazine. Some of you might also find put to music.

(please note: I just kind of pasted these here without any rhyme, reason, or order to them. so keep looking through, and maybe you'll see something you like!)

Their Eyes In

He and She are two lines, converging
to a point like sharks in steady motion:
always moving forward, never going back,
and never standing still until its end.

He and She are straight lines with nothing
but a steamy ninety-eight-point-six degrees
between them, keeping them apart,
separated by an ark until they reach the Point.

She is a solid line, at least 5B lead,
running parallel along the grid
without wavering, without a bend,
and inked to give her shadows,
character, emphasis and depth, while
the other lines perpendicule around her.

He is a dotted line, bisectual,
cutting squares in half, pointing straight
a-head like an arrow, dangerous and
pea-cocked by its fletchings.
A compound beau with pulleys
and gears that often miss the mark.

He and She are headed for a Vanishing Point,
To a collision, or towards a horizon line
where every building skews in a new direction
down slanted streets, slouching towards,
To end, or to continue on and on, anon.

He and She are headed towards a head,
forged by perspective. A trick of the eyes
and the I’s and lines, the lives and the lies,
manipulating space- and wasting -time
creating new dimensions to live in-
side by side, not content with length-by-height.

He and She are two lines, converging to a Point:
An ending, a forever, or flip-sides of a coin?

Saline Caoineadh

South by sound, she sailed along
where oceans moan and spread their wings.
A siryn’s call in canyon’s lost;
she cried a ghost to answer me
“I’m waiting. I’m wading.”

Her hellfire eyes parted waves;
a lighthouse lost in fog to die.
The crashing foam swallowed footsteps on the trail,
eroding echoed memories,
soft and fading past Connemara
where Cliffs can’t break her fall.

The morning sky creeps up the ledge,
running red with virgin blood.
Her tattered mast falls to driftwood on the sea,
a star bored keel-haul tragedy
wading in salt for water.

The Company Bow

A sundial, sitting at the edge of a skirt, is feeding
on decay from proscenium walls. The crumble of
its majesty is Grecian in its tragedy, but hardly
as memorable as the long forgotten luster
of the golden laurel leaves that adorn the façade.

The space below is filled with rows
of wine-stained lips, each frozen in
a petrified reach to kiss the sky
and hide its eyes from the dying
desolation that they themselves
once wreaked upon the stage.

If only these mouths were open, they could taste
the stuffy air staled by every clapping palm,
every whistle, every pleading whisper, and the
last recited lines whose echoes still fill the space—
they are always trying desperately to escape
but only can reverberate off of
floorboards drenched with rain
and tears, cleverly constructed
arches that have failed to do their job,
and of course, the final curtain.

Summer Was Never Our Season

Summer was never our season, or so
it seems (excepting Scarborough beaches,
crossing bridges by Five, colorful eyes,
those few sticky nights we still hold on to):
first mute, then blind, now trapped in different times,
the heat has always been kept down. But that
sensation—waking beside you, the cat
spitting allergens at me, purring, “Mine!”
as she nuzzled your chest—was still worth it.
If I could I’d have given you sunlight
but the moon waged war with us, and our fights
were never known for being temperate,
like the summers we keep wasting away
or nights spent wishing for one more day.

Kids on a Rope

Wandering, ambling, waddling, slow,
they walk on my bike path, walk in the road:
kids on a rope. Why are kids on a rope?

Velcro shoes muffle the shuffle of feet;
Autumn winds wisp through their lisps, missing teeth.
Kids on a rope. Why are kids on a rope?

Bundled in coats though it’s 60 in fall,
don’t stray too far, children. Don’t stray at all,
kids on a rope. Why are kids on a rope?

You can’t hit your students, teach God or Huck Finn,
but you can tie them on a line to stay in:
kids on a rope. Why are kids on a rope?

yellow

(that’s the whole point of no return) she said
picking pedals from a chartreuse pistil letting them
slip from her fingers without thought without
feeling as they fluttered to the floor to become some
thing or not that’s why we let them fly
or fade away
it’s like riding in a parking lot and leaving
training wheels on and on and on and never
standing on your own two
(wheels ways eyes feet) we
can/not keep waiting for the okay/go (why) yes/no
—broken glass and open windows—tethered safety
chords and time and rooms and lines and
(yours and mine)
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting

STOP

(he loves me, he loves me not)

24

Two dozen
years, like eggs,
embryonic, unfertilized,
unlife cracked and splashed
over sizzle-pop olive
oil heating hash the morning after.
One broken piece,
small, brown, jagged edge,
shaped like Connecticut, drifts
into a cloudy white sea
turning tundra when it’s ready
to consume. Delicious.
Shattered out utero armor.
Not enough to notice, or cut
you from the inside, but enough
that you might hear a faint crunch
inside your head, reverberating
amidst the pillars of teeth, feel
them grind into shell and devour.

Equation for the poultry
life that is, sacrificed for
nourishment
unTwo
another.another
young unlife, fried,
over easy, golden insides
hardened, yolk spilling
out across the pan:

shells couldn’t carry
the weight of this walk.

Oh, Sweet Nuthin'!

He parted his lips—
not for a kiss, but to tell her how
she looked her most majestic
in the shadows, her naked flesh, pearled
white with spots of sweat, glowing softly
in the luminescent blue of the room,
or in the deepest, cleanest ocean,
naked limbs pretzel’ed all around
each other. Tangled; intertwined.
A place where even moonlight
couldn’t be itself, but bursting
streams of sunlight, rolled and wrapped
around celestial cratered curves, barely
permeating through her thick
navy curtains. When he caught
that soft glimmer, he wanted to
tell her how he gleaned himself
through her eyes, how for once
he admired his own face
when he found it
reflected in her deep, dark,
dilated pupils, and for what
he hoped that she herself
had seen in his. But all
she heard was, “You
look better with
the lights
off.”

it's hard to be a badass when you're in love

hide white rose bouquets in your shotgun case,
nuzzle burnt cork stubble on her tender face,
stroke velvet cheeks with your torn leather glove,
romantic surprises from skylights above,
crash through her window, wait in a dark place.
your shattered glass snowfall leaves not a trace
except on her bed, where arrangements there of
botanical art hide the jagged-edged blades
that cut into her, leaving scars in the shape
of each mystery land she imagines you rove—
her knight in drab armor, the one who once drove
her home on his motorbike, a team solitaire race
against reason and rhyme, against time, against space:
oh, it’s a hard to be a badass when you’re in love.

The Writer & the Writer's Brother

Oh Michal,
Brother Michal, now it’s time for you to sleep.
It’s only you and me, and seven years
of memories. The vomit of a child’s scream
and pungent odors still haunt me. You’re slow
across the edges, on the uptake, all around,
so Michal,
Brother Michal, say good night and rest
your head upon the ground.

Oh Mother,
My dark Mother, sleeping soundly
down a well. Please remember, so
dismembered, every fairy tale you gave me
so to tell. Did your art excuse the fashion?
Did it justify the mean and twisted torture
that your oldest son endured before
I put you both to sleep?

Oh Father,
Fascist Father, floating freely underground,
rest in peaceful little pieces with the one you
love and I will make you proud with every
last fantastic fable that was never fit for print.
Oh Father,
Our Father, pardon please your thrice-
named child of your first and greatest sin

and flash that toothy pillow
smile ’til I was not alive-alive, oh
Pillowman please take my hand
and squeeze me—softly, sweetly
’til I died.

Every Girl Is An Apple

Baby, can you read this mind?
Because I won’t say a word.
I’d rather hide myself inside
of this ruby-tinted world. But if you
looked behind these colored glasses,
you would find that darling, it’s not
love, it’s just another trick of the eye.

When I dream of Jean, prior to
the goblin Queen, it’s the thought
that counts on me to cheat.
But you will always find me in
this white hot room for three
keeping Frost and fire waiting
willing on their knees. You see,

every girl is an apple. Yes, every
girl is an apple. Every girl
is an apple in my one red eye.

Marvelous girl, let me enter
yours; I’ll show you mine. Just know
that I keep one foot out the door
and in her mind in a fantasy: I lose
control of you and then escape,
then when you’re gone I tell myself
that it’s too late because every girl

is an apple. Yes, every girl is
an apple. Every girl is an apple
in my one red eye,

                                           and if looks
could kill, then this could be love
-ly to see you again, in life
or ’til death do us part.

Film Noir

You always tasted better when we kissed in black and white,
and your slender cigarillo ash shined softly in the light
of the gas lamp halo overhead that guides you through the night—
yes, you always tasted best in black and white.

You always sounded better singing secrets under ground
beneath the lonely light that lit our love and hummed electric sounds
that harmonized our haggard hearts and beat in leaps and bounds—
yes, you always sang the sweetest under ground.

You always saw me better when you spied me through the haze
of twilight mist, a blanket full of nihilistic greys.
The kind that keeps the cold out, brought us comfort in our days—
yes, you always spied me spotless through the haze.

You always tasted better when we kissed in black and white,
and your slender cigarillo ash shined softly in the night
when the gas lamp halo overhead would guide you towards the light,
but I loved you all the more when you right.

A Suit For Every Season

I wish I had a suit for weddings,
another suit for funerals, but
celebrations start and end the same.

The uniform for every date that
becomes an anniversary, suspended
in an uncertain closet until

the next big day. A mostly monochromatic
costume, with shoulders fitting square
and stiff to help you stand up straight,

and slimming black pinstripes designed
by French-Italian coffee names.
Accessories may vary — try

the skinny tie this time, with matching
turquoise button-down to brighten
the attire and tell the world that

it’s newlyweds, instead of waking life.
But the mourning after either finds it
hanging up again, waiting for the day

when you might lose another friend.

Broken Bells

The wine stains shattered
slate, fermenting still/s
off wild yeast; a strain
lost like Gospels in Crusades.
The lonely tree survives
somehow, through cavernous decay —
of course the urban kind, a
-theistically gentrified.
It persevered, despite
its persecution, thriving
safely in the tower’s shade.
The bell it once contained
would cry or beg for mercy
to be euthanized, if
it hadn’t already gone deaf,
dumb, and blind
in some mythical time
-before-time. Where its booming
tone had once reverberated,
low and resonant,
the sound has since
been replaced by over
-powered subwoofers,
speaking in too-small
Sedans. I tried to ring
the bell again to shake
the tree of fruit, but found
the padlock cut and the gate
rusted shut, keeping what
ferments inside from spilling
out and altaring our lives.

Aftermath

White scars stain a lightless
canvas, tattoo sky dark blue
while dissipating shuriken
smother fires on the moon
and starbursts singe the air.

Burrito Sonnet #1

Our love is like a burrito, tightly
wrapped and warm and sometimes much too filling
(not uncomfortably so) or slightly
messy, sometimes sloppy, often dripping

with a liquid mélange of every food
group represented — the fluffy brown rice
with mildly spiced salsa and a good
chunk of meat, not-too-sour cream, a nice

spoonful of Aztesticles, beans and cheese.
A savory medley united by one
massive, impassioned consumption that frees
that flavorful drive. As it spills and runs

through your body, its tastes fill your being
with pleasures that make for a life worth living.