She leaned against a telephone pole
grounded in searing concrete. Her white
dress blew in the balmy breeze like
balcony curtains. Her Merlot lips
and azure lashes popped against
her skin. She wore a citrus perfume
to garnish every hip swing and shoulder
roll with a tropical accent. Like a tambourine,
the silver bangles chimed on her left wrist
with every footstep.
Her heels sunk in the veiny tar patches
that criss-crossed each parking space
several times over.

Her eyes are like tidal waves,
constantly threatening to break
the cornea and drown me.
She lures me past the buoys
and lets the tides pull me farther.
My hands are like paddles,
pushing water behind me but never
enough to regain sight of the shore.
I take in a few more breaths of dry air
before I'm completely submerged.
I cannot see the sand beneath me,
so I take one last look at her sunflower iris
blossoming above the waves before
my lungs give out.

Every Saturday night, the band downstairs
covered King for twenty-or-so retirees at the bar.
They held onto their drinks and memories
as they applauded the classics, their rings
and watches sounding like wind chimes
against frosted glasses.

Broken wing love birds smiled and laughed
with one another. The bartender cut limes
and dropped cherries as they rose a drunken
toast. *Here's to this moment, where we're
anything but old.

Love is like an ice cube.
We hold onto it until
it gets too cold. Lucky
for us, I made room
in the freezer beside
TV dinners and a miniature
us holding hands atop
a slice of wedding cake.

He knelt down beside the nightstand
and gathered cigarettes smoked down
to the filters in his growing hands.
Loose ash stained his palms  
as he moved the butts to one hand
and slid a coffee cup closer with the other.
He stood up—his eyes barely met
the drawers' brass handles—and placed
the makeshift ashtray on top.

A woman watched her daughter
cry through the bottom of a shot
glass. As the last few drops of whiskey
passed her lips and tongue stud,
she closed her eyes tight and inhaled
the scent of cigarettes and Pledge.
Her daughter's spill tray was spotted
with tears, Cheerios, and formula
running down her chin like sweat.
The woman picked a giraffe baby
blanket up from the twisted carpet
fibers and swaddled her head, trying
to find silence. The baby screamed
louder, her face turning cranberry
red. The woman pressed her palms
hard against her covered ears
while sliding back on the couch, causing
her to kick the coffee table before her.
The shot glass rolled off and bounced
on the floor at her feet.

I'm studying my surroundings
because I don't want to throw a white
sheet over reality and lie about
what's underneath.

I'm fighting the urge to rhyme
because I don't want to have to mix
and wrench words to speak my mind.

I'm suppressing fits of profound speech
because I don't want to shift diction
to sound older or wiser than I am.

I set a table up outside
because I don't want to write inside
my head.

I'm tracing leaves, watching cars pass,
and sipping tea because I don't want
to guess.

High on Cateye and Ghost Sight,
I stumbled through the streets
of Salida del Sol beneath
the watchful eye of Father Elijah.

The roulette spinner cobblestones
clicked as my feet dragged
past the courtyard.

Like an effigy, the homemade martini
between my fingers burned
my gin-soaked lungs.

Sweat and vermouth settled
in the circuits of my collar
as I gasped for relief.

Hologram gamblers tossed golden
casino chips in dried fountains
as they strolled past me and through
the Sierra Madre's gates.

She intertwined her thick fingers
behind both shelves of the medicine
cabinet and embraced them clamorously
into the sink.

I.

Maybelline, Rimmel, and Revlon
now spotted with flakes of dried toothpaste
and ****** hair.

Just.

Her hands dove wrist deep into the pool
of glamor and acceptance before her
and emerged with scarlet lipstick.

Want.

She uncapped and carefully ran it across
her stiffened lips, accidentally coloring
her skin and the corners of her open mouth.

To.

She mashed a makeup brush into a jar
of powdered blush and swept it over
her cheekbones like a blood red sunset
overtaking a mountain.

Be.

With black tears running down her face
and staining her white shirt,
she reapplied her mascara.


**Beautiful.

She and I exchanged disdainful glances
across the parking lot. The verbally brash
invitation she gave me at 10:30 two nights
earlier from a low-riding car resounded
in my brain. She wanted our graduating class
to get together and sit awkwardly around
a campfire while a few reminisced
of homeroom and half days back in high
school. And as the last few embers glowed
like residence halls, she would clear
her throat and bash college. She’d denounce
the curriculum, professors, and parking spaces
then praise the days of hurrying through carpeted
hallways and freshmen traffic. To see our classmates
laughing with hands outstretched to the flames
would bring a smile to her summer-chapped lips.
But we’re no longer classmates.
We’re just seventeen people trying to live our lives
outside the confines of Galeton High School. Sure,
we’ll bite our tongues and fake smiles every now
and then, but we’ll never be more than superficial.

I’ve always wanted the artist lifestyle
even though I paint with words.
I’ve always wanted unfinished paintings
taking up space in an East Village apartment
with acrylic stains on a futon. I want those late
nights awake creating, making sure every idea
is brushed against a canvas’ grain before it’s swept
beneath my worries of utility bills and eviction
notices. I want to see possibility in everything,
and I want to push everything to its limits.
*I want to be so ******* close to the edge
that I could misstep and die at any moment.

People always want to forget
their pasts and live in the now,
but they can't because their tire
swings are still tied to dead trees.

I promised Nick I'd take him out
of Pennsylvania, away from evergreen
trees and our troubles. My car leaked carbon
monoxide, but never enough to ****
us. Where we lived, things never changed.
Two out of three stores open on Main Street,
two gas stations where people paid $3.64
a gallon just to leave, a grocery store
that never settled on a name, and a police
force with histories no cleaner
than their patrol cars. If you've taken Route 6
through, you've seen too much. We dreamt
of Lady Liberty raising her torch to the sunset
in defense of the Empire State, or simply to pluck
it like a musician playing for pennies
near Strawberry Fields from the sky.
The Big Apple, where people make art instead
of excuses and the brightest lights aren't fixed
atop police cars.

Years have passed since our dreams died in '13.
We're stationed at desks in different hemispheres
for different reasons. All he has left are his lonesome
thoughts and all I have are mine. It won't be long
before my pen becomes a serpent and strangles
me in my sleep or my butterscotch disks turn
to cyanide. I'll always hold steadfastly
to our dreams underground.

Nick, I promise you that one day, we'll make
it to New York.

I'm not leaving behind loose change
to later find a hundred dollar bill
beneath my skin.

I'm not expecting to race
over grass and gravel to greet
you with an umbrella today.
I'm not expecting to fight
you for blankets and bedsheets
if we sleep together tonight.
I'm not expecting to wake
you with a kiss or caress
if we open our eyes tomorrow.

Words don't sound as good after midnight.
There's nothing to say when no one's up
to hear you. Stand on a bench
in the park at one o'clock and preach to trees,
press your nose against a store window
and scream at shopping carts, or sit in a gas station
and mutter to the lottery machine.
Pass the time 'til daybreak.

I read through a bedside stack
of my poems labeled The Heartfelt Architect.
They were bound with a paperclip
reshaped to accommodate their numbers.
Half the pages featured watermarks
around the edges like emotional copyrights.
I had written about friends' frustrations
with loves and losses for three years,
stressing that paperclip every day
before realizing I had written an autobiography.

I pressed my back against a cold
bench textured like vinyl records.
The teens that sit here spin
gossip like forty-fives before
the subway train stops. Their black
nails dig the city groove
of ears popping and the hopscotch
skips above. A man strums
his steel guitar to the beat
of footsteps echoing through
the tunnels. Like a tambourine,
the kids’ loose change bounces
off the concrete muffled
by his distressed Yankees cap.
They won’t miss the feeling
of Abe Lincoln’s *****, copper
beard between their fingers.
*More room to bury their fists
and dig the city groove.

Dizzied by a porch swing's varnish Chloroform,
I shared a silver hook with a knotted rope
snake for stability. Although my finger
constricted the viper against the cold metal,
it did not hiss or spit psychedelic venom.
I braced my bare foot against the truck's
wheel cover around a twisted corner
by an empty church, tolling
my heartbeat. Cardboard acted
as the bed liner, I played the liability
if the swing should slide past the flush tailgate
and take me along with it. If it did,
shifting gravel guitar solos and cherry pie blood
would swing my pain away.

He gave me a pen and paper
and told me to write. I pressed
the pen down and watched it
bleed blue. He clutched my wrist
and drew a box no bigger
than a matchstick. Write.
I was struck up more like lightening
than an intelligent conversation.
This sliver of a sliver of tree pulp
was my canvas, but I made do.

I don’t need to act profound
to feel like a poet. I don’t have
to unnecessarily waltz around
the truth because I can’t always
fill a stanza. I don’t have to rhyme
to get my point across.
I don’t have to curse life
or write my sorrows. I don’t
have to manipulate the emotions
of others. I don’t have to manipulate
my own. I don’t have to write for anyone.
I don’t have to appease anyone because that’s
not poetry. It’s not about tailoring your mind
to meet the expectations of others. It’s not about
always speaking eloquently. ****
anyone who tries to establish rules for poetry.
Poetry has no guidelines, only the ones
we establish ourselves.

She rested her thin hands beside her keyboard
and proofread the email to her landlord.
She was adamant about getting the most
from her lease and, though wealthy,
insisted on knowing the price of everything.
Milk is almost five dollars and gas is almost milk.
Littered around her bedroom were shoeboxes
of handmade jewelry, pearls, and war correspondence,
each as fragile as a land mine. Loose soil footsteps,
shrapnel, and a Sofield soldier torn in two.

Pacing on cold, honeycomb linoleum,
I watched the sun rise through mesh
curtains. Sunlight striped my chest
like Gothic architecture while a clock
measured the outside. Two strikes
for a car to pass, seven for a lonesome
jogger, twelve for leaves to reach
the road, twenty for a cloud to overtake the window pane, and three
months left for me to watch it.

If my GPS didn’t take me the long way,
I’d never see the luscious mountain tops
spilling trees down their faces in spring
or mallards coasting downstream.
I’d miss out on a patch of stars
filling in for absent clouds
or a leafy overpass catching
the sunlight just right.

Beneath
a Marlboro
hat was his faded straight
pin and rake tine hair in patches.

A carton of Light
100's glowed house fire red
in the cashier's hand.

He pulled a fifty and two tens
from his wallet then coughed
up blood into
his sleeve.

When kids pop more pills than balloons
at a fair, take more rips from bongs
than Beyblades, shake hands with *****
dollars and plastic bags, steal more money
than hearts, are in more mugshots than family
photos, **** more than war, sell more ****
than lemonade, read more billboards than books,
go through more girlfriends than socks in a week,
text more than they write, inject more ******
than flu vaccinations, drink more beer than fruit punch,
put their lips around more pipes than Popsicles,
and die more than live;
then we'll know we've failed them.

I unrolled my sleeping bag like a rope ladder
to get a better view of the searchlight stars
that filled the sky and the river at my feet.
String lights washed up on the rocks unplugged,
but the ones above never stopped shining.
Minnows danced to the clouds passing
like slow motion strobes. Flashing lights
from a private jet made a few stars seem
bigger than they actually were. I assume
the same goes for the ones in California.

Sliding wounds were patched
up with concession stand napkins.
Wads of Big League Chew formed
a mosaic beneath the bench
and smelled like apple cherry.
Spat-out sunflower seed trim
lined the cracking cinder block walls
and became the popular hiding spot
for hair ties and M&Ms.; Lead
paint peeled from the walls in strips
like the white chalk lines
of the diamond beyond the fence.

I sat beneath a silver maple split
in two, yet still growing.
Dead leaves and nestlings
chirping like quick fire sirens
settled in the vein-like branches
above. The maple's cracked
canyon bark was dotted
with yellow lichens like distant
city lights.

Blankets, pillows, a black dog, and a cell phone.
Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Gmail, and Instagram.
Shampoo, soap bar, toothbrush,
toothpaste, temperature, and time.
Shaving cream, razor, running water,
advertisements, sensitivity, precision, and cuts.
Burned tongue, empty stomach, loose tie,
missing shirt buttons, beating the clock,
wallet, briefcase, and car keys.
Ballpoint pens, scented trees, fast food wrappers,
loose change, lighters, citations, ***** clothes,
CDs, and napkins.
Red lights, pedestrians, homeless people,
newspapers, billboards, pets on leashes, sewer
grates, crosswalks, skyscrapers, and garbage.
Faxes, printers, memorandums, break room,
prestige, cubicles, customer service, paperweights,
filing cabinets, stocks, and corporate.
Wipers, streetlights, rain coats, dive bars,
and home.
Blankets, pillows, a black dog, and a cell phone.

Sheepishly held-down dental floss
guitar strings and cracked hands
like sink-side toothpaste.
Cuspid picks in a mint-scented, plastic bag beneath textbooks
and a zipper rusted like gingivitis.
A backstage house of pamphlets
slurred time like novocaine speech. Thirty-two people sat at coffee-stained tables talking about their routines between sips of créme de menthe cocktails and water.
Fluoride lyrics dripped from his mouth as people closed theirs.

I stayed up late last night writing you this letter
by desk lamp while you were three streets
down in Nowhere drowning in boxed wine.
If you got caught, the box'd be bigger with iron
bars and a bench where you'd sit and reminisce
about two hours ago when you were too gone
to sit down. Mismatched couch cushions
and black light posters of Marley and psychosexual
women in spandex. Then there's you with a cup
in your hand and a hole in your skirt, dabbing
the corners of your mouth with my late night
confessions. Thank you.

I knelt next to the bed and rested my elbows
on her pale thighs. Before I prayed, I pulled
a rosary from between my ******* and wrapped Jesus'
crown of thorns around my knuckles. My babygirl's
chewed nails massaged my parted lips, and the Sharpie
on her hand overpowered her lilac perfume.
I dropped to the blankets when she spread her legs
and the scent of impatient desire filled me. I eased two
fingers into her and begged Jesus for forgiveness.

A solar sunflower danced on her dashboard
and the lei on the rearview hit me like a snakebite.
Scented trees beneath my feet smelled like a flower shop
fire. Her seatbelt was knotted like her shoelaces
and her lemon lips kept me coming back.
Between us on the highway were CD cases and enough
loose change for a sweet tea. We turned off the radio
and listened to the roar of the wind through her cracked
windows. Her dress' hem flattened on her thighs
like the moon. Four hours to a truck stop with curios
and 75 cent ****** machines in the bathrooms.
Her doors creaked on their hinges as we danced
our way to the concrete.

Kids in pajamas cut at the knee,
so they won't trip barreling down the stairs,
beat on their parents' door.
There's a Bible beneath several self-help books
and a vanity mirror sporting a crucifix etched
in with scissors. Mom and Dad toss the blankets
at the headboard and follow their kids.
The sounds of squeals and running water come
from the kitchen. A pill case sits on the counter
while one kid fills a plastic cup half-full of water.
The blood of Christ and soap stains.
The kids smack the table trying for the rim
of their baskets. Jellybeans, peanut butter cups,
and shredded plastic bags fall from one's.
The other is showered by a cascade of prescription
bottles, daily dosage instructions, and torn-up coping
pamphlets. Carrying a handful of Prozac to his mother,
he tugs on the hem of her nightgown and smiles.

On warm nights like this, streetlights
dot the sidewalks thick like map markers.
The screeching of tires mixes with applause coming
from the church. The breeze pushes my hair like a broom
in the deli I used to work at. Croutons and capicola
don't taste as good forgotten beneath the stove.
A bike light dances beneath the brush and teenagers
hold hands like chain-link.
Doors on either side of me catch carpets and don't close
like textbooks during finals week.

I sat beside my window and listened
to the dragging of heels and drunken laughter
four floors below. I pulled the plug from my outlet
to let in the sound of two strangers having ***,
so I could see if there really was a difference between
what happens between two people and what happens
in the midst of mindless company. I paid the landlord
in Monopoly money. Soon enough, I'll have to pay the rent
of Boardwalk for an apartment on Baltic Avenue.
She told me she'd be over after she ate, but I didn't
want her to rush it. I can wait.
Take all the time she needs
to make memories out of broken bottles
and bent caps. Clothes all seem to melt away
when ***** slides past ladies' lips, but I know my girl
has a Solo cup of tap water between her knees.
That is why I wait for her.

I held my swimming pool stomach
as they unraveled the hose from the side
of the house. I laid on my back in the needle-like
grass that perforated my skin. They cut beneath
my ribs and lined me with a wood tarp to keep
the water in. No anesthetics, just a cup of fruit punch
to numb the pain. The yellow parasol inside dropped
deeper into the cup with each sip. They placed the hose
in my incision and sewed the skin around it.  
As my stomach expanded, I sipped harder, so the pain
would go away. But as I neared the bottom of the glass,
the liner ripped, and summertime was ruined.

The radio across the room
doesn't play FM, but that's okay.
I'm content with static propaganda,
and a cat biting at my pant leg.
I guess China won and the debt
ceiling doesn't have a fan big enough
to keep all of Capitol Hill cool.
I have a fan still in a box in my bedroom
beneath ***** clothes and empty folders.
I could be the solution to Washington's problems,
but I feel better holding out.

Under winter's breast,
we were calmed down and tucked in,
but not very tight.

Winter coats were pulled
off wire hangers as fast
as they were hung up.

Last night, Winter placed
one more layer on the earth.
We added one, too.

My dad
taped my first steps
on VHS. I took
my hands from the table and walked
to him.

The tape aged with me.
Cheering and static
muffled my excited squeals.

I know
I’ll grip the camera one day
and film my dad folding
his hands on the
table.

He wanted to please her as he had when they were fifteen,
she just wanted sleep.
“Please, I’m not in the mood tonight,” she groaned,
and turned towards the threshold of their bedroom.
She fixed her attention to the clatter of dishes displacing water
she was too tired to change.
Her wine glasses were closer than they were in the sink.
He turned his thoughts to the constant hum of the street light
outside their window,
and thought of this marriage.

Clenched teeth taste weak as they hold back the truth,
and each second wasted burns more than any mouth washed out,
but it’s worth it. “*******, Mom,” is what she says
as a sting of regret coated her tongue like cough syrup. She never holds back.
“I hope you ******* die.”
Liquid metal and salt fills her mouth to keep her quiet.
“You’ve got nothing to show for your life; that’s why Dad left.”
A heat is burning her tongue,
and leaves behind the painful taste of rubber,
like the marks her father left on the driveway.

I sat a foot away and sketched her. I didn’t use pencils.
I drew her with words. I started with her cheekbones.
They were raised like hands eager to explain
what gradation does. Her mouth provided the answers
and moved like sketchbook pages in the wind.
I moved on to her eyes. They were like the Van Gogh palette
from which “Starry Night” was born.
The charcoal above them was like a ******
of crows at dusk. If she saw imperfection,
she could cover it up. She was the painter,
but also the canvas.

I took my eyes from the white, tiled floor,
placed my fingertips on a frosted window,
and used my sleeve to clear a view of Williamsport’s
skyline. I saw the buildings as part of an unfinished
masterpiece. Ross and Hepburn had their visions,
but lacked the essential skills and supplies.
Ross couldn’t overlap shingles, and Hepburn’s
red and yellow palette put the project on hiatus
until the spring when the snow melted.
I receded from the window, dried my sleeve,
and looked back down at the unfinished tiles.