Poetry
Contest Winner
After We Marry and Head West
I will wear the dress you bought me in Omaha: pin-prick flowers, rick rack trim. Of my two moods—stoic, verklempt—I will choose the former, become my tin-type self: neo-homesteader in scuffed boots,...
Contest Winner
Fundament
Winner of the 2023 Foster Poetry Prize / / Reciprocity says let me love you and I’ll let you love me. I’ll taste your criticisms so long as you’ll lick my praises....
Matching Red Flower Barbie Sundress, a Parting Gift
Dear Artist, / This piece reminds when I was little, I found a songbird bleeding from its mouth under my window. Lost direction. My first deathtouch. First brush. Choke (d) chirp. I...
the night sky is an arcade game
the night sky is an arcade game, pixelated with stars. we bleed ultraviolet, nova hearts, sunspots in our eyes: clutch for cosmic strings. divided by quarters, by phases & cycles of hope....
The Healer
Once my lower duplex neighbor left me a used teabag. Once she dropped off a handful of weeds, roots and all. Once she slipped me a newspaper clip about fatal bee allergies....
The first
My father always says they fell in love sitting on the Malecón, legs dangling over the wall, when her flip-flop fell off her foot onto the rocks. He says he jumped off...
Lanugo
I look my girl in her dog face Her horrible brow and long snout What made my girl like this I brush her human hair long behind her sharp human shoulders Careful...
What Do People Do at Night?
The cat licks her leg so long it starts to bleed I soak prozac in her food Make a meal described in a memoir about eating disorders I misspell memoir as memori...