poetry

thread lit mag
where the mantis shrimp are omniscient*
***nominated for best microfiction 2024
adventurer
dear writer*
***nominated for best microfiction 2025

la bella journeys
cross to bear

gone lawn
delirium tremens
heartcandy

willows wept
marcescence
from hand to sea

words & whispers
the brightest sunsets

ghost city review
enduring

stirring lit
bedbloat

wise owl
coping

addiction is a sweet dark room
2024, another new calligraphy

they drink with the sun
2023, bottlecap press

books

featured

welcome wagon

first published in the london magazine

when the apocalypse arrives at my door

i fling it wide & let my anxiety outside

without a leash & greet the welcome wagon

before me: full-armed reapers cradling

breads baked with the stench of death & pastries

filled with the hollowness that stolen purpose

leaves–all wrapped in a cute little bow sewn

of promises that nothing will ever go wrong

again (because it cant) & so i invite them inside

with that finally-gatsby kind of smile & they ask

me why my spirits are so high at The End & i

chew while i talk & ignore crumbs on the floor

& i say its because there is nothing left for me

to fear because there is nothing left to imagine–

nothing left to picture in my head during gaps

of sleep–nothing that isnt sitting here in front

of me, now, in my kitchen, eating off my plates

blucifer

first published in empyrean magazine

the brawny cobalt archangel guards peña boulevard & his

naked, exposed-wire veins, had seemed much larger when

i first arrived in denver for a failed intervention; if you had

told me that the statue was a hundred feet tall instead of thirty,

i would have believed you, because that is the size i imagined

him to be when i heard he killed his creator. it had not been

the body committing patricide–it had only been the head: cranium

cutting through luis jimenezs leg, a too-heavy mind lashing

out at its unsolicited existence. as though the mustang had been

curbing a binge, family & friends rushed to clean up what

was left, sending fragmented fiberglass limbs off to california

to be rehabilitated, that is, to be put together, assembled whole,

either finally or again. time passes & he returns, intact & standing

not far from where he had once laid helplessly in a pile of his own

regret. now he flexes an aggressive solitary stampede into the west,

spending his time scanning the rocky embankments before him

& below him, forever charging towards the endless need to leave a place

in order to return.

dendrochronology

first published in pile press

one day you will meet a stranger

who wants to cut you open:

they will brandish a saw with teeth

like truth and lacerate layers

of you like jungle, peeling back

into your rings to count too

slowly and too loudly, hrmm-ing

and humm-ing with the patience

of a doctor uncertain of bad news;

they will ask you why your core

is a clenched onion fist devoid

of moisture, yet your

freshest rings hold the thickness

of summer air and swollen

streets and you will laugh and

you will say the rainy season

was never kind but that flash

floods kept you afloat once

you learned to stop swallowing

them whole