Roman is running the LA marathon.
It’s no touch. No high fives. No kissing.
It’s the time of the virus. What might

have been if the world responded
to gay death in the ‘80s with this level
of alarm? On the dance floor at Akbar

you are so beautiful. I watch other guys
look at you and hope you’re going home
with me. And then you do and we sit

on my porch smoking pot and talking
about portals. You point out Venus
and I go back when we met, two years ago,

watching the stars drunk and high
on a stranger’s lawn. Agnes Denes says
Anything important has to be almost

invisible. And underrated. And strong
enough to hold the earth. And I wonder
if you know, I’m thinking of you now.

You, in my bed, my hand on your inner
thigh, taking you in slow so later—now—
I can feel you when you’re gone.

The runners and those watching are not
wrapped in protective suits. They are still
living their lives in the last open moments.

Every shape, every kind of movement.
I love them at this moment. I miss them
like I miss you. Mountain missing fire.

Originally appeared in Pangyrus, June 14, 2020.

Do you see me search for you
in all the usual places?

Then catch you sudden
in the crowded car of the train.

You are never surprised and look back
with that wide smile.

Now
it seems you’ve gone
into a deeper hiding.

Perhaps these growing drums
have frightened you away.

Or maybe
you are leading me

into a darker corner
where it is harder
for me to see

so when I finally
find you,

I can see you shine
even more bright
into my eyes.

Originally published by Amethyst Review, February 4, 2020

He jumps out of a moving car
trying hard to stay alive.

The Silhouette bar behind us.
A hooded moon on watch.

They’d really love us, he says,
pulling on my cigarette hard.

Just be all about us. Like he is.
Wants to take us himself.

We take his word instead—
get out—head south at dawn.

Past the slow parade of Ohio.
The hills of your Kentucky.

At night, we sleep in a tent
off a long stretch of freeway.

Where we’re going the water
moves up quiet at night. Stirs

in the morning. Look out
at the lake. How fast it shifts

underneath. A giant storage
battery. A beautiful machine.

Originally published in The Adroit Journal (Issue 12)

In the awkward center
of this small yellowing room

I may swerve into the beams
of purposeful light as antidote

to this tight-wound rug.
Eating this cherry

can I still strip fruit from pit?
What if my throat receives the stone?

This is what led my mother to say
she was going away,

though she could never
follow through:

Sometimes the space between
the rungs of the blinds were

too wide for her, the teetering
weight of a glass stem,

the faded gloss shine
of the dinner menu against her hands.

She could not touch a fork.
She could not manage.

I’m sorry I could not make
the dinner.

Originally published in Rust + Moth.

Back then, Sara invited the artists
for rum-spiked punch. I brought
a lover with his colossal German nose.

I almost forgot how they adored him.
How he built a cartilage between us—
Instructing the guests in an essential trick

of how to tip go-go boys. Now, a church
strikes ten, but sounds like twenty.
Unreliable time. I was a fickle lover—

ungrateful. I’m sorry little cosmos
of misters. Alphabets of horse, squirrel.
May you love one another deeply soon.

Climb those attic stairs and look down.
What do you see when I think of you—
do you see the wasps? Their yellow.

This poem was originally published in Tupelo Quarterly (6)

This urge to do whatever can be done
to stop the headlong speed—

to stand tight, courageous against
a thunder of mad grizzlies

driving us steady toward the still,
unguarded moment of dusk.

Even if I marshal every motley
hero to my cause—somehow

convinced everyone on earth
to stop moving—the grass will

go damp. The tulip’s elastic petals
close. The night bullies the room.

The stars will not hold back.
Sleep pushes in. Yellow grays.

No matter what I desire above
all else, this darling will pass.

Originally published in Rust + Moth

I say, let's plant a farm—let rows of corn,
cukes, tomatoes, and winter squash weave 

the concrete floor. Raise soil into beds
with wood walls. Crack the ceiling until rain

finds a way in. Open blue sky here
in the center of the sheetrocked cathedral. 

We can invite the city on embossed invitations. 
Tents in the new wing for whomever stays 

the night. In the late hours you and I can escape
to the sea compartment and taste dark salt.

So many lovers we won't meet. Horses left 
unrode. Language tapes boxed in the basement.

It's always in other rooms. Your collarbone 
under my hand. My air inside your lungs.

Originally published in The Cortland Review.

At the end of the day, Z and I talk about sand:
how it took the house in Eternal Sunshine. How
the two boys eye each other in Bad Education.
Our crush on Gael Garcia Bernal. Z suggests,
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” I ask
about “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”
A tiny car parks outside. Death Trap, my dad
would have said. Z’s friends ask about Paris
without wanting to know. I propose Contempt.
So much hope at the start, a naked Bardot
in bed asking, “do you love my neck? my feet?”
She’s betrayed by the American. Goes silent.
She shouldn’t have to say anything, I think.
Z is stunning and lost in thought. I’m Jim Carey
watching the sand begin its slow destruction.

Originally published in Melancholy Hyperbole.

And the thin one, the beautiful
finch of them, fears what’s next

rolling his eyes back into a mislaid
valley—a moth, worm without dirt.

He thinks he can save himself
by cutting the air of conversation

but the question is accustomed
to corners, lying as it does inside

a man’s gut, growing on its own meal
of particular logic. Watch it become

a grapefruit—a miraculous child—
ruby fruit of thistle. Flowering doubt.

Originally published in Memorious 22

Mornings I’d crawl down to listen
to the boys feed the calves.

John let them suck his fingers.
He didn’t know they wanted milk.

Josh ran. His mom called him rabbit.
His wall jammed with ribbons.

The boys slept in bunk beds.
I heard them whisper about the west.

Matthew dreamt of the other coast.
He learned everything about surfing.

I can see them older now, wading
into the Pacific with long boards

under their arms, tight rubber suits
zippered. Everything rippling out.

Originally published in Melancholy Hyperbole.

In Berkeley, there are signs for a psychic fair.
You want to stop and while I’ve sworn them off,

I secretly fear we might end then, when someone
says we’re through. But you can’t find a parking

spot so while you circle the block I go in
to have my aura cleaned. Students murmur I’m red

or blue light, circling their hands around my head.
When you finally arrive, we sit in front in folding

chairs and Rachel, twenty one, tells us we were
Romans once: Greased soldiers from different ranks,

one ordering the other to combat, to slip off boots.
We will finish our karmic debts in this lifetime.

There will be no more driving next to you or stopping
anywhere for dinner. No more kissing.

Originally published in Melancholy Hyperbole.

We will meet again in a frozen Oslo,
reveal our bodies only after

we spot each other’s naked hands
in the post office line, then remember

that skin of finger, bird of wrist,
bringing us to a beach—the glowing arm

of you holding a book, reading pages
that were once alive in a forest in Quebec,

while I, barely open eyes, daydream
of binding your hands in leather

tying your figure to a bed to keep you
because I’m weak for your lucid skin.

(Once lives as men, women—all the dreams
we created before we knew about bodies.)

Now, I’ll search for you in the profiles
of others in a sparse Wyoming.

Build a land of near misses of your neck.
You will know me by the book,

in the window of the village store,
reminding you of distant bodies of light.

Originally published in The Fourth River: Queering Nature 

when the alarm is to call
just before the purr of water 
rolls to boil, in the moment 
you can still make out the sun 
on the plane of trees, when 
I almost forget what it was 
to cross the Golden Gate Bridge 
in that mini-van on our way 
to Point Reyes, I catch myself. 
Time had its way. When cellos 
begin I'm afraid you might be 
in Saskatchewan, where I have 
no intention of ever arriving.

Originally published in The Cortland Review.