The moon was a fist,
the fog a loose linen sleeve,
the night a dark muscle,
the street a clean, wet bone.
She arrived messy, damp,
fawn-eyed in my new nest
on Thomas Circle, hastily
cleaned. Streetlights swept
the ceilings, spotted handfuls
of one-off constellations,
a crooked new zodiac, laughter
pulling us to an aluminum bed.
But the moon was a fist
pounding through the fog,
backed by hairy-starred night,
breaking tomorrow's bones -
this second tryst was the last.
I couldn't bring myself to be
both her lover and nurse,
my mind sagging, anesthetized
by my cancerous mother
undying in crawling spirals.
It was a mistake - it is so hard
to find someone who searches
inside you for the things
you are, the reasons you are,
what you might yet be. But,
after all: the moon is a fist.
1d ago
Jun 2, 2026 at 5:16 PM UTC
By the end, I couldn't even speak
to my first wife except by text,
even if we sat in the same room
quietly offering dinner to the TV.
Evening flooded the corners
of my heart, I existed only
as an outline of a man, obsessed
with movies that spoke for me.
Liquor helped grease the blood
through the veins, fueled
the celluloid cycle of reinvention -
I was Scottie in Vertigo filling out
a neon-framed silhouette, I was
Frank Booth huffing ether, I was
Charles Foster Kane, dreaming
of the lost snowglobe parents -
I was twenty seven as it broke
apart, and my oldest friend's
younger sister's closest companion
was seventeen, a sweet singer.
At parties she and her friends
would mock us from the fringe
of fiery halo, would skirt the night
kitchen and giggle as we fought
with beastly fists and country
laughter. It was music that pulled
us together; back then I was
still untouchable on six strings,
she was claiming her voice
for the first time. I strummed,
she crooned to backdrop lushes,
but we didn't care. That was
the end of it: a handful of songs
across a handful of parties.
She moved away, married,
became famous. My ex and I
fled in opposite directions,
I became a marathon runner
who could never run far or fast
enough to get away from myself.
I saw the singer on TV not long ago,
& thought of forsaken evenings
in the pine salon when she would
squeeze my fingers for a moment
after we serenaded the beery eyes.
Thank god she'll never know
I was claimed by wild wet shadows,
ghosts in glad glass; prisons, poems.
4d ago
May 30, 2026 at 12:25 AM UTC
Alone at the cheapside, waiting
for my half-friends to play bar
trivia, drink down a salt sea
of margaritas. The wind rises,
steals squared napkins who
become brief black gulls.
I watch them fall to knots
by my hands. I think then
of the quiet museum lover
who preferred hands over
anything else. Easier to stay
separate, easier to control.
It drove me half-mad,
like the night she picked a fight
with two strangers on the walk
home from market. I was livid
but kept silent, our mutual anger
boiling over into *** as usual,
her hands furious and purposed,
as if that night stood in
for all the nights; as if she might
pry me loose and keep me near,
a particularly nice bedside trinket.
That was years gone now.
The crass tequila drags me back:
the evening rides a sorrel mare,
tramples a flimsy, ramshackle sun
into the yesterdays where it belongs.
7d ago
May 26, 2026 at 10:42 PM UTC
Angry slash of noontide sun
across my porch-blotted face,
"It's like a ********* recipe,"
says Mike, leaning against
his van after we finished
the Montana flooring.
"Play sports, work in the sun,
you're young and ripped.
Date all the girls, or guys -
whatever. Then you find
drink, or drink finds you.
Life being what it is, someone
hurts you pretty bad. You drink
a little more. Then you're
here, fat with age, stuffed
with grief and who knows
what else, happy for a minute
when the moon is full
or something. How many
people did I just name?"
I confessed: dozens
we knew, both of us included.
"It's so predictable."
We stare at the black sway
of power lines as the wind
picks up. The sun smears,
we leave the attic work
for next time. I run away
across streaming silver cars
into the lonely ear of night.
May 17
May 17, 2026 at 8:59 PM UTC
Dear T----,
Your heart was an aquarium
stocked with languid jellyfish -
those who tested the waters
were brushed with stings
that left red welts wide
as fingers. Seven bars told us
not to come back after
you went wild and green;
I missed the hunter's bar
most of all, where you shattered
a pint glass after a blonde
waitress winked; she was blithe,
even innocent; you never cared -
everyone lit your subatomic fuse.
Now I hear you've married,
maybe doing better; no more
are you the scorpion fossil
in the amber of my recollection.
I still tell people a little of you,
your crucifying betrayal with
the storybook man. Ah, but
that's how it so often goes:
death-engined trainwrecks
meeting on a bridge trestle -
neither of us escaped unscathed.
You captured one of the best
years of my life in your eager
swallows, but it ended in
an emergency room.
Despite it all, I hope you're well,
Respectfully,
Evan
May 16
May 16, 2026 at 1:01 PM UTC
The bus ferried us in ochre arc
to the sitter's house, K---- beside
full of starling's chitter in her plum
paisley coat, eager to compare
scary books we both would steal.
When her father left to begin
a new life in Baltimore, she shared
in hellish halts about her mum
drinking from a lonely riptide
of terrible, unquenchable dark.
By the time my Huckleberry Finn
hooked her Halloween rabbit's tail,
she already guessed how love goes;
it took me 30 more years to know.
May 12
May 12, 2026 at 3:52 AM UTC
Fumbling with the apple sheet,
peeling it from the hard bed core
slipping down until no more
of us would fit, and then - complete.
It was the season of sun-sweet ***
shy blue poems, raw car dreams
that tigered forward to rip the seams
of uncareful lives; what came next
was inevitable - we must mow away
the first-grown lawns of love; she undid
our lazy hopes and something slid
away inside me, spilt out, strayed
& was lost in a too-green spring
where birds cut the day with a wing.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 12:53 PM UTC
The Old Kingdom has fallen:
only a few pyramids of snow
remain, stained dark as sloe,
snowcapped with pollen.
The person I was in winter
is gone, a bare bough
budding to green, a brow
untroubled by the splinters
from a crown of thorns -
no, wrong myth. Maybe Icarus,
except the father had cirrhosis,
died, and the son mourns
as the wing wax renders
from spring's merciless splendor.
May 1
May 1, 2026 at 10:54 PM UTC
Your pearl eyes guide me
in the bone-black of the room
to your ruby mouth;
your cuidado kiss consumes
my last aching molecule...
Let's not lie, not now -
we never consummated
in our waking life
all the many nights we spent
in our witching, twitching thoughts,
although we came close.
You led me slowly along
upper Monroe Street
until we both feigned surprise
at discovering your door.
We climbed the long stair
to your barren rented room
where you pinned me down
to that old chair with your eyes,
spoke such wonderful nothing...
Never did I feel
quite like that ever again -
the promise more real
than the thing could hope to be,
a no so heavy with yes.
Apr 27
Apr 27, 2026 at 6:27 PM UTC
Newly married at twenty-three
to my lovely, lonely first wife,
I filled my countless weekends
cutting up thick-barked deadfall,
hefting logs meant for two
into Jake's bonfire where we poured
motor oil drained from his Jeep
until the brawly flames reared
four stories tall and melted bottles.
I remember little after that until
the clock clipped three and
the bonfire stopped whistling
from its dwindling amber heart -
I had to excuse myself
into the soft-shadow trees,
missed my footing and fell
into a dark, bristling beak of lawn
that swallowed me whole
& as I lay there voices called me,
called me from car dome lights
that flickered on like wrong stars,
laughing that it was all over now,
the party was all over now:
just go home, just go home.
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 10:12 AM UTC