I Left My North Oakland Shadow
Published in Someone Tell Us Where We’re Going: Poets Wanted Anthology 2020 (2020) and Still Human (Falkenberg Press, 2025)
We Smile Back
The lamps in our lives gaslight our eyes until we walk out the screen door to welcome autumn moonlight into the sweep of our sight gazing upon the […]
Protests Whip Oakland’s Bones While I Go Hunting for a Bookshelf Online
when I come across a commanding one I bet my books will claim as their home. In the question section, a customer asked if this bookshelf comes armed. Will a […]
Dementia Descends
An owl family descends upon my grandfather’s synaptic membrane as he digs the final period on a postcard to his wife he will only remember in the past tense. […]
A Finger Skyscraper
I know I’m unremarkable. I’m one of 8 billion human beings all with a pulse vibrating through limbed consciousness. By my math, the Earth hosts in the grasping range of […]
We Live in this Universe
Over exposed lobster, I sat with my father in open Boston air when he gathered the language — in 1960 Attleboro, Massachusetts his uncle Mark got molested while […]
If Only San Francisco Had Hands
You say now’s the time to squeeze San Francisco out of our 40-year-old selves. If our future heartbeats pump inside a suburban address, will we still love each other […]
Tenderloin Bed
You reach your apartment lock, open darkness into your Hyde and Eddy apartment next to New Princess Market next to a brain encased inside a white-knuckle skull who sleeps within […]
You Left the Kansas Rectangle
three presidents ago yet you still have a 913 Kansas area code. On a ripe Saturday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, you smile with an out-of-state mouth. […]
Cribbage
At my kitchen table in Boston, the rush of shuffling a 52-card deck sends me back to my grandparent’s home where I sat with Grandpa Charles at his maroon-stained […]