two-sided things,
not monovalent states of being.
The second half of guilt is blame,
and anger’s naked backside, shame.
Embarrassment reveals defiance
while hope decays to troubled silence.
Sadness bleeds from pure elation,
sorrow’s core is resignation,
and love conceals a womb of grief
(though grief may someday bear relief).
Our hearts, with time, are torn asunder,
but mended, hold more space for wonder.
I wish I might’ve known before
the years lay shattered on the floor.
I wish I would've told you so,
but oceans ebb and rivers flow.
I wish I could've shown us how—
for that was this, and then is now.
Sep 26, 2025
Sep 26, 2025 at 10:38 AM UTC
Power flexes
downward:
a hulking, indifferent
appendage
obscene in its
obviousness,
but the obviousness is the
point,
you remind
me.
This latest one was only twenty-
six
and seemingly healthy, but no
matter—
in Hokkaido by now the
larches
have all dropped their
needles,
and the fumaroles of Mount
Asahidake
still hiss, even while
covered
in heaps of snow. I wish
that
you could take me there. I
wish
that we could set
off
into that pale oblivion and never
return,
immersed for the rest of our
days
in the frigid, accurate
waters
of Nature’s
reality.
But she has no dominion
here,
you remind
me,
and we are all just tourists in this place
anyhow,
sidling beneath cornices and sidestepping
crevasses
aslope an angry volcano in
winter,
that warm, glowing lodge at its
foot
seemingly never
drawing
any
closer.
Dec 14, 2024
Dec 14, 2024 at 11:51 AM UTC
Our trajectory is unknowable, you tell me: the planet
corkscrews around the Sun, sure,
but the Sun corkscrews around a black hole at
the heart of the Milky Way,
and our whole galaxy travels on some mysterious,
incalculable vector. But sister, I saw a photograph
in which two whale sharks were brought to
heel by men in simple reed boats just
off the coast of the Philippines. All that they had
to do was often feed
the sharks many gallons of grocery-store frozen
shrimp, poured from plastic garbage bags into
their yawning six-foot maws to portside.
Gargantuan, sure, but still
as obedient and eager for food as backyard
squirrels. I remembered a grainy
internet video—I saw it probably seven or
eight years back—in which
a captured whale shark was winched
ashore in Madagascar, or
maybe it was the Philippines again—no matter—
the thing still had life left
in it and struggled to breathe while a crowd of
people gathered around—there were
women carrying babies, girls holding baskets atop
their heads—and then the
men came with a long slender blade and sliced clean
through the whale’s spine, vivisected it
right there on the dock, and the onlookers stood there quite
unfazed—I remember
being shocked at the effortlessness of the cut,
the pinkness of the whale’s blood,
and the boredom in the onlookers’ eyes. Our father
took us down to San Antonio
on one of his business trips there when we were five
or six—I think
you were probably too young to
remember it—
it was when you and I saw the ocean for the first
time. We drove down to the Gulf
of Mexico, and we saw waves breaking
out near the horizon in pale
sunlight. I kept scanning for a dorsal
fin off beyond
the breakers, thinking that I might spot one—
sandy brown, mottled with
cream spots and glistening—so that I might be able to
say to you, pointing, “look,
sister, there is a whale shark!” Years
later we would learn
that he traveled down to San Antonio so
frequently because he was a philanderer. As
a child I believed that whale sharks
crisscrossed the ocean following
paths that we couldn’t fathom, that
their concerns were somehow
beyond our comprehension, but then
Keppler pinned down
the shape of the Earth’s orbit over four
hundred years ago,
and the lives of ancient sea
titans are sundered
effortlessly
by men with indifferent faces.
Sep 22, 2023
Sep 22, 2023 at 2:27 AM UTC
The oil's spilled; the weekend’s spent.
Battering rams adorn our newest cars.
The coral's bleached, our girders bent,
and as the ash falls, drones fly on Mars.
The poker chips clank on the felt.
Sweltering mules sway drunk in bars.
A toddler falls, receives a welt,
and as the fires grow, drones fly on Mars.
I could not bear to speak the truth
when you had asked me where went the stars.
A cow sits in the kissing booth,
and as the sky blackens, drones fly on Mars.
The wind has fangs; my heart now sags.
A feral pig grunts to mass applause,
Now childish men hoist cryptic flags,
and as the crops fail, drones fly on Mars.
Aug 19, 2023
Aug 19, 2023 at 2:35 PM UTC
Winter had arrived
overnight, and
we had slept soundly through it, the
snow smothering
any sounds that dared
try to escape.
The morning arrived clear and sunny
and cold.
I was washing the dishes in that
old kitchen sink of ours when I noticed them—
footprints through the snow in our backyard—I couldn’t
say how many sets there were—
starting at the back fence and
proceeding directly
to our kitchen window. You
told me that you were going to head outside
to shovel the walk, but I told you
that I would take care of it, and I put on
my boots but no jacket, and I walked
out the back door, shovel held tightly
in hand. The tracks traced
the full perimeter of our house—
they appeared to be searching
for something—and they stopped
right outside of her
bedroom window—I couldn’t say
how many sets there were, or how long
they’d stood there while she slept.
I don’t know what
compelled me, but I turned the shovel
over, hurriedly using its edge to scrape
away the footprints there beneath the
window, the grass beneath them still
green and struggling to breathe.
And when I came back inside
you asked me
what I was up to out there, and I told you
that it was too cold
to shovel, that we should put on
another *** of coffee,
that we should stay inside
and not face the day,
and let the children
keep sleeping.
Jan 1, 2023
Jan 1, 2023 at 12:53 PM UTC
When your sister
died, it was the blue
box of Kraft Macaroni and
Cheese. Your half-
sister from your
father’s previous
marriage cooked it up
for you—she was only
a year or
two older than
you were—and you fell
asleep there on the
floor, where it remained half-
finished for the entire
night. When you
awoke the next
day, before you had even
opened your eyes, you
thought for a brief
moment that maybe it
had all been just
a dreadful nightmare, but
then you opened them and
there the macaroni and
cheese still sat, half-
eaten on that paper
plate. No—
it had all
actually happened.
When your coworker
fatally poisoned
herself, you made
up your mind to
buy the nicest
ingredients you could
find and to cook the best
Italian pasta recipe you could
think of in order to
show your family
how much you loved
them. You wanted to be
present with them, to be still
alive with them. You
wanted to not
make the same
mistake twice, but
then there you were
at dinner, distant
for the entire
meal, unable to even
make simple
conversation, ashamed of
the awful contortions your
brain was doing in
order to process
your guilt over
her death.
When your father
died, it was some left-
over soup you had cooked
up a week prior. You were
embarrassed about how
the black-eyed peas and
sweet potatoes had turned out;
you apologized to your
wife for their mushiness,
and she smiled sadly and told
you it was the best
soup she had ever
tasted. After a week in
the refrigerator, the kale
tasted slimy. The soup was
overhot; its texture,
nonexistent. By
this point in your life, the
texture of nearly
everything—even that
of death—had become
wholly unremarkable
to you.
And when your old
friend from college
died, there was
no meal at all—just
a hasty cup of black
coffee you poured
yourself right before the
big work presentation
began. The text
message said that
he had thrown
himself from atop a
skyscraper in lower
Manhattan, and that
he had finalized his
divorce just a few
months prior. You
thought about calling
off the meeting, but your
boss said that he
would be in
attendance and, grimly,
you decided to swallow
your bitter emotions
right along with the
coffee—you didn’t
want to let
him down.
Mar 25, 2022
Mar 25, 2022 at 1:00 AM UTC
The fruit of
the Pacific madrone
tree may at
first entice you
with its fiery
scarlet skin.
But bite
into it and
you’ll taste
astringent, gristly pith—
with hard seeds
like discarded
children’s teeth.
You will know
that foolish feeling
that lurks within
the shadow between
sugary expectations
and bitter truth.
Nov 15, 2021
Nov 15, 2021 at 11:00 AM UTC
Seasons change
and daylight burns
and shadows move
across the world,
and if you yourself
don't move as well,
those shadows may
pass over you.
If you yourself
don't move as well,
those shadows may
pass over you.
Oct 12, 2021
Oct 12, 2021 at 3:47 PM UTC
Whales were,
above all else,
deliberate
about the pace
with which they
moved through the world,
conscientious,
perhaps to a fault,
about the economy of movement
required to propel
such incredible mass over such
enormous, empty spans
of open ocean.
Here is a humpback whale
resting, face-down
staring into the cerulean
abyss, alone
but singing, perhaps for
enjoyment, perhaps out of
boredom, or perhaps due to
loneliness and longing.
She twists
and turns a single eye up toward
the surface, her iris catching
sunbeams and contracting,
as she gauges
the gargantuan effort she must exert
in order to gain her next breath.
In this case, she concludes that, yes,
the effort will be worth it.
But what you must know about
whales is that
on rare occasion,
they would cast these concerns
of intentionality and efficiency aside,
and choose to
activate the entirety of their being,
from the sinews to the soul,
and propel themselves,
heedlessly and at top speed
toward, through, and past the surface of the ocean,
as though they were attempting to
fully take flight,
to escape, with finality,
the cold confines of their known existence,
the omnipresent, furrowed gaze of the void below.
But invariably,
and in spite of their best efforts,
the whales would be pulled
back downward,
by forces they could not
fully comprehend,
sure as the tides would fall shortly after
the moon passed overhead.
Yes, the physical impact of colliding
with the surface of the ocean
would be painful for the whales,
but what hurt
so much more than that
was having to return
to the stark, lonely calculus
of whether or not
to keep going.
May 22, 2021
May 22, 2021 at 11:55 AM UTC
As we got older, it became clear
that we wouldn’t have the luxuries
of drink without worry,
of sleep without restlessness,
of raising children
without fear for their survival.
It became clear
that we would never garner
the respect of our elders
no matter how dearly we pined for it,
and that the world itself
would smolder
while those responsible
rested comfortably in their graves,
and those of us to whom
our forebears’ sins were bequeathed
would be left to choke on the smoke
and ashes
of a promise to posterity
allowed to burn instead.
Jan 3, 2021
Jan 3, 2021 at 2:33 PM UTC