poem: crush

you were not supposed to do this to me. this is not fair, this is not what I wanted. please get out of my mind and stay brilliant somewhere else. Don't you understand? Everywhere you are and I am, there is so much in the air, I cannot breathe: Color still chokes. soft death is…

poem: how could i be so stupid? but here we are again.

it is his fault: he smiled at me first, stared at me until I looked up and met his eyes; or our gazes danced around, touching, laughing, sparkling, but never meeting. I thought it was only in books that eye contact made the air crackle. I thought I was done falling in love with people…

poem: river flows in you (three steps for love)

i wrote a manual last november: how to fall in love, three easy steps. first, be a ghost, be silent and secret: your lips so dusty that even coughing cracks a new breath. then wait for a boy to uncork into greying Fall days, his eyes splashing wine, his voice nervous and young; while you,…

poem: nostalgia, not contrived

the girl sat in her english class and watched the sky flatten itself against the university window, like even the clouds are desperate to get in and learn critical theory. she pulls her sweater over her fingers and silently sulkily puts an earbud in so she can listen to japanese indie and feel like a…

poem: what is not (lost & found)

I am looking for him everywhere but he is not even in my dreams he is scattered over the snow in kicked-up footprints he is the smudges on the windows when I breathe against the glass, watching my loneliness fog into my fingertips, watching him always not appear.   little girl (asked in broken english) why…

poem: gods at small tables

she walked past him in a red coat. he was sitting in the hazing that comes in the dawn. his back to the window and the world and his soul in his typing fingers, the innocence in him always stark and fresh. his leg stretched out just so, his headphones taped over his ears, and…

poem: college (essay at midnight)

essay at midnight and she is frothing with all the wrong things the economics boy kissing inside her inside his computer script and also him kissing his girlfriend. the cold coffee, just one-fifty more calories with crumbs wet at the bottom. the ripe, nice words falling into her tired hands. english major: that's a nice…

poem: portrait of a lady, january 2019

pine tree hands make ginger kisses. they are better than the crowd of girls: nice, but all emotional. the boys carry rocks on their heads and in their eyes; the girl tuck the rocks into athletic bags and into breasts. she is with the boys, competing, the rocks split open to Intelligence and Intellect, and…

poem: self-delusion, always in style

there is a dream: right now, he is far away, in London and Japan, and he is not remembering her: he is all symbol, not enough boy. There's no sex when it's only literary, didn't the blood on your lips teach you that, or the blood inside that cute boy in the journalism class, the…

poem: cabin out in Nowhere

wouldn't it be nice if someone was secretly in love with me--- loner, an under-used word in the poet's dictionary, but it tattoos nicely into her softer eyelids fraying, against her cheeks. against her intellect. wouldn't it be nice if someone found my answering all the univere's questions-- adorable--and not awkward-- the shifting impatient eyes…