("Marginalia" previously appeared in Rising Phoenix Magazine.)

You look at me
like I’m the last person
you want to see,
eyes welled up with
heartbreak full of buckshot
and the thunderous purr
of a chainsaw. (1)
The blood rinses
these ink-stained hands (2)
and trembling
memory, widowed.
My love is little notes in the margins
written in dark cursive, (3)
forgotten asides,
misspent connections
ring like mallets
raked down sun-dried spines
At a table
with vampires and thieves (4)
ready to chew through
red meat,
drawn and quartered
by four mares.
It’s hard to keep secrets
from people who speak
with spirits.
They tell me:
We cannot go back.
What is past
won’t be undone,
only forward now,
and hope for something
new.
______________________________
(1) Stephen Graham Jones, “My Heart is a Chainsaw”
(2) Joan Naviyuk Kane, “Late Successional”
(3) Joan Naviyuk Kane, “More Dissipate”
(4) Hooray for the Riff Raff, “Pierced Arrows”

(Drunken Boxing previously appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Winter 2023) 
​
I’ve lived seven hundred years;
my earliest memories are as a child
playing in the Cahokia megalopolis.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that
the dead get off easy.
 
Forty-four skulls
buried in the ground, [1]
concrete and rebar,
shadow scars
on Hiroshima walls
Where our bones will rest[2]
No marrows in[3] – all
dues down – dead from the neck up.[4]
Dig up her bones[5] – dig her up
in the name of anthropology;
dead name in her obituary,
this poem of dirt,
red earth on a moonless horizon.[6]
Still air and decay
sweet scents for anyone
who has died countless moments
and lived seventy-plus lifetimes;
potpourri
like ozone-laden winds of change
before a thunderstorm;
twin typhoons
pitch your ash to the seas,
Rimbaud,
tiny man in his boat,
cast to riptides and archipelagos,
heroes for ghosts;[7]
apparitions that try to leave
point me where to go,
because I can’t get there on my own[8].
 
I can’t see much future
in two cookies with no fortunes.
I know if I were to die tomorrow,
I hope our souls find
each other
once again
even if it’s
to burn
in the
same fire.


[1] Eels, “Soul Jacker part 1”
[2] “and we don’t know just where our bones will rest,” Smashing Pumpkins, “1979"
[3] Distillers, “Drain the Blood”
[4] ee cummings, “V” and “XXVIIII” from “Is 5” collection 
[5] Misfits, “Dig Up Her Bones”
[6] Federico Garcia Lorca, “Ay!!”
[7] Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”
[8] Misfits, “Dig Up Her Bones”

(Breakup previously appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Winter 2023)

Beach insects awaken,
though slow going.
Tiny ice dams still frozen,
clinging to the ocean-turned smooth stones,
which gave them support
in the darkest, coldest
months.
 
Forests come alive again
after a deep winter slumber;
Trickling snow melt scampers
between boulders
eager to meet water brethren.
Ocean waves lapping
at the coast,
and across it all
are the songs of ancestors
long forgotten
and recently grieved.
 
As I set on the shore,
a boat unanchored.

(Cacophony previously appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Winter 2023)

For Romeo Romero
 
“The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind like exhibits in a museum of a slaughterhouse.”
— J.G. Ballard, “Crash”
 
This fight is post-Indian:
the hope of stories, white ravens
and Cheyenne War Dogs.
 
A knife held to my throat
no will to deny the urge
to step forward;
vocabulary lost to obscurity,
threat of language death.
wind raspy, carried by the heat,
drought dust,
prairie blossom pollen,
and
lightning fires.
 
Cry myself,
down slick centers
until my voice fragments
into gravel, a grenade,
static, resonance
of a larynx
wrapped in barbed wire.[1]
 
Literary ancestors
battle demons
swarming in legions
army ants en masse
attack a promise
I want to take back
but can’t;
and the promise
I wish you had made
but won’t.                    And so it goes.
 
I’ve been a heart for hire.[2]
Learned to stop chasing things
                                    we should run from,[3]
an abomination, a villain,
                                    again and again,
blank stares in return,
cold, dark shark eyes
her tongue hooked
on rows and rows
of serifs.[4]
 
Ties that bind, nowhere to hide,
shred my mannequin skin
off at the seams.
Truncated memories:
soft light
in the sundown rain gloom;
dolphins in the under tow;
starfish hobbled by nature;
to forgive myself, I point to
the earth as witness:[5]
 
What is this?
Need? Desire?
 
I cannot be one of the ghosts you inherit
to which you so desperately
                                                            cling,
Nor can I receive your wounds,[6]
scarred lived lives over.
 
This body was not designed
to bear life --
Am I instead
meant to carry grief?[7]
 
Franklin 118,
a paradise
of misfit toys,
inverted saints,
and broken granite chess pieces,
protective salt circles,
devils club charms,
thrones of maps and mirrors,[8]
songs few can hear.
 
respite from the downtown crowds,
a sea of bad decisions
                                                and past lives.
 
And a memory of I,
Out of body:
a carbon copy
of someone else,
a shell in a game
I always lose,
distant, looking down,
light and shadow
dance along power cables,
mimicking imaginary animals
as they scurry back and forth
in their old anarchy
to the horizon line.[9]
 
Heart beats heavy,
ghosts in the esophagus[10]
with jack hammers
 
I lay on the ground,
                        my skull broken open,
brains spilled out
crows with keratin disorders
feast on the buffet
of gray matter
picked over.
 
Those that fail to learn from history
are doomed to repeat it,
the same can be said for us who dream the future
but are powerless
to change its course.
 
Will we be remembered
for our mistakes
the way humpbacks are identified
by their flukes?
 
Winter is about finding the strength
to leave the year behind you.

[1] Inspired by Joy Harjo’s “Are You Still There”
[2] Hooray for the Riff Raff, “Hungry Ghosts”
[3] CHVRCHES, “Tether”
[4] Rena Priest, “Creeping Out of Orbit”
[5] Ada Limon, “Notes on the Below”
[6] Inspired by Natalie Diaz’s “Beauty of Busted Fruit”
[7] Ada Limon, “The Vulture & The Body”
[8] Ada Limon, “High Water”
[9] Sylvia Plath, “The Colossus”
[10] Ada Limon, “Late Summer After a Panic Attack”

It's been almost a month since my last event, Winter Echoes, was held in Anchorage. 

The idea came to me when I'd invited someone to come down to Juneau to participate in a spoken word event centered around the idea of displacement and diaspora. 

As I was planning a trip to Anchorage for a friend's birthday party, I pitched the idea to Out North Executive Director Erin Willahan, who loved the idea, and immediately started hatching the plans. 

We each invited three people who are fantastic writers and performers in their own right.  

Unfortunately, one of my invitees had to bow out due to illness, but the show was fantastic.

I won't lie, part of my motivation for producing these events is to have a front row seat to some amazing entertainment and performances, and I'd been really wanting to see Synclaire, Raquel and Itzel perform live. 

And maybe that's the secret: Don't produce a show and hope other people will enjoy it, book the show that you want. to see and the audience will connect with it.

Thank you to all the performers and Out North for being such a wonderful part of my December.

("Ariadne" previously appeared on Words & Whispers, Issue 13, September 1, 2023.)


Her skills of weaving
               golden thread
               through the deepest deceit,
To feel each fiber
               in the string. 
“My princess, my sister of Crete.”
     Asterion,
               named after the first king,
               locked in a labyrinth
               beneath the Palace of Knossos,
               he releases a long breath, 
               “This is light. This is darkness.
               I grieved the best of us.”
A sacrifice to make her world, 
               heroes to entreat, 
               only for them to leave, 
               each a badge of abandonment, 
worn like scars, seven stars, 
               hang a constellation, 
               a crown, in the sky,
while the nymph 
               ​sways in the night.