zinc words & images

  • Dinner

    I say a prayer Over This plate of rice And question whether I am worthy Of One Single Grain. I know this is not What prayer is for. There is no comfort In silence. And the wintering Of my bones Is the only answer To my questions. Short and hard Are my days, The design…

  • Listening

    I let the pigeon go. It wept in my hand and ringed its neck, left and right. Against a brick wall, I was shattered from listening to the coo that never left.

  • Correlation

    To start with salt is the explanation I heard in history class. Salt builds civilizations. But I reckoned this with the kitchen table. And how often the hand came down next to the shaker.

  • Long Walk

    Regulate my temerity, but lust for the bastions, where roses and a deep sigh wait. Beekeeping myself against waxed rows and granular helpings of pine-scented lips. Retire this feeling beneath the decking boards and the sunlight relish, that lift my shoulders beyond where I knew they could be. Shanks and beatitude for the trees and…

  • To My Friend, On the Occasion of the New Year

    Keep trying. The end may be nigh, but you aren’t. Whether you disappear beneath the ground or into the sky- whether we return to our mother’s wombs on our weeping knees, or settle into salty oceans, you and I are fathoms we cannot depth. The inkblot, the zeroes and ones that trail our names are…

  • Cacophony of Pain

    We stump our toe in one place and remember the way it breaks, snapping bone made brittle. No open palm stops the compressed flesh from yellowing , no kisses or tender words remainder the pain. We repeat as if it was new and not the time after the time we lost count.

  • Yes

    Catastrophe abounds when you reach behind me to touch my hair and whisper, “Shush, it’s the night and I am here to save you from yourself.” I can only see beyond the castles and trees moving with respirative awareness and think, “You are the end of me.” Your wordless presents prevent my absolution from the…

  • Anguish

    I would sit at your hand, Zeus, and become hammered gold hugging your wrist. You should be mine. I watch you watch all the girls with an eon’s worth of power right below me. Deep sighs and thirsty bellows reach me through the vibrations of a beauty half made in your image.

  • Forgotten Voice

    This voice is quiet now. I have not put pen to paper. Nor have I heard you, beautiful muse. Come to me! Grant me your omniscience and the confidence of strident satyrs, who are not afraid of foolishness- they bear it in all around them. I seek you outside my car window, near my tools,…

  • Who You Are

    I’ve got the ambition of my friends written all over my hands, under my arms, at the soles of my feet. Those words tho- invented, aligned, melodious, never unkind. I wonder did we pass at some point when time was not binary and a dime could call you home. At the movies were you in…