The Uncertainty of Our Futures

For Taryn Kahle sweltering hour beads of sweat lick my sunburnt nape paddle and soap dish in hand off some nameless bank I slip into the Colorado the Grand the Rio del Tizon the Maricopa the cool lifeforce of this southwest desert as easily as I do into freshly washed sheets naked embraced sweet surrender

I Used to Be a Poet

Listen to my first slam poem of 2021 and follow along with the text below.

The Laundry Load

there are days when i wake up buried in laundry under ultraviolet light these clothes would show a bloodbath there’s no delicate setting on this spin cycle impossible to separate childhood from the whites from you quit softener and dryer sheets years ago because it all comes back the same one time in fourth grade

There is Joy in Sadness Too

today i cried the sudden out of nowhere wasp sting between the fingers COVID swab up the nostril kind of cry for the man on the bridge was a titan of grief propped up on six legs nothing special about today or the bridge or the man or the tears just that the medication seems

ALL THE WRECKAGE WE’VE WROUGHT

i don’t know what tomorrow brings the breathless ache of begging pardon from the departed or the lips of beautiful boys in dive bars pressed to poem taught me it’s apt to be neither the good or the bad or the absolution desired how many hours did i chase both (hours and hours and hours

nesting

it feels like it’s coming back / inside / a subtle shift / same as before / different / every time / shifted to the counter / to make room / boil pasta / never replaced / no one would care / why should i / who even has a decorative kettle / boy /

Big Dominquez

On the weekend COVID-19 hit my town, we descended into a canyon south of its outskirts named for the friars Dominquez-Escalante. Their troop never explored this monolithic crevice, crossing the Rio del Tezon some forty miles north-east, but the mythos of destruction claims much of the barren West.   I wonder if aisle fourteen of