when you drag the womb of your womanhood down the Gratification Aisle. You pick a price-slashed clitoris since the one Ma gave you got kicked in the shin after you and David failed to fuck a baby into reality through those hot pandemic months of 2020. Does that make you […]
Published in The Cosmos is Alive (Kelsay Books, 2023)
“The Camp Fire started on Thursday, November 8, 2018, in Northern California’s Butte County . . . an urban firestorm formed in the foothill town of Paradise.” “Remembering the Camp Fire: The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history.” CAL FIRE, State of California. fire.ca.gov. Smoke sweeps down Oakland sidewalks […]
Published in Speculative City: Issue 6 Industry (2020) and Still Human (Falkenberg Press, 2025)
Coyote shambles north along San Pablo Avenue. At the West MacArthur Boulevard intersection, he trips over a skull. “Oakland, what is this white sphere my paw crushed a hole through?” “This contained the brain of a homeless citizen.” “Did this citizen die on your concrete skin?” “Yes, she did.” “Well, I wish to see Oakland […]
When the rat climbing up the wall makes a seedy flower go bloom, my organs rearrange themselves in frightful frenzy. Rat fur does that to my nervous system. It’s strange mouse fur doesn’t coax the same response from the bundle of neurons coiled up like a garden hose in the backyard of the […]
When a stray bullet is a stray dog, a stray dog barks within a chamber of anger before runaway legs unhinge themselves from a gun’s steel ownership to bite an eight-year-old boy’s neck who rides backseat on an Oakland freeway. His mother’s motherhood collapses onto the car floor. She steers the […]
When the Sunday morning sun hands out sunburns like maternity ward newborns, I sprint through that neonate heat. At the junction of Love & Am I Alive, I tumble into a cafe’s hot arms. I need a hug from my absent sister. Can I spot her in this cafe? I plop […]
Published in Someone Tell Us Where We’re Going: Poets Wanted Anthology 2020 (2020) and Still Human (Falkenberg Press, 2025)
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 same lunar guide as our ancestors of old who draped themselves in animal skin to survive a Quebec winter with the promise of […]