In the Death of Your Boyhood and Birth of Your Teenagehood,
do you remember the hooded memory of when your father grilled a slaughter of steaks on a July 4th grill that swung open like a carnivorous mouth? In your teenagehood’s […]
To the Daughter I Won’t Father,
you’re shriveled up like a raisin within my raisin-skinned right testicle in a XY body I’ve claimed possession of since a C-section slice when my mother gifted me life under […]
Into Lawful Nature
At the beginning of a new episode during a Law & Order marathon, mom screeches out find the murderer. So I propel out the back door into unfilmed darkness defined by predator-on-prey […]
Chemo Visit
As I drove to the hospital to visit my friend Billy during his chemo treatment, a stray lightning bolt struck a eucalyptus on the side of a wooded road. When […]
Falling
I stumble into my skinny studio at Avenue C and East 4th. After a double bodega shift, I fail to dish out a fresh offering of Sally’s high-protein low-carb salmon-flavored […]
Pigeon Survey
Published in Still Human (Falkenberg Press, 2025)
Don’t Lick the Wallpaper
Under a Saturday sunrise’s ascending heat, you scamper inside Grandma’s home. With a bucketful of revenge, you strip away a strip of Scheele’s green wallpaper. Through her bedroom door […]
A Stranger in Roswell
Night arrives on four haunches when I kick the capsule hatch free and flounder through a New Mexican night. An alpha to my voyeuristic species, my claws skitter-scatter over a […]
New Roommate
“Who are you?” I yelled at a woodpecker pecking a bedroom nest in my one-bedroom apartment. “Are you Alder?” the woodpecker chatters back. “Yes. This is my Oakland apartment.” “Well […]
Birth Head
Through her delivery room screams, Luna pushed out wailing life. While my genetic shadow had two human arms and two human legs, a lettuce head sat on top of her […]