On the wrestling shows
the muscle men grow
bigger by the minute, I
wrestle with dessert
promising exercise after,
hoping to mold myself
into their stern shapes,
capturing their hard work
in dizzying arrays of push-ups,
the results always hidden
under gentle burn and fatigue.

Church

The adults stood mouthing lyrics
and hearing the wailing pipe organ
singing the drone of an angry God, I
trembled in the pew, curled
cowering beside my mother's coat,
the congregation's chant lifting
the brazen angels' clinched fists
over guilty hymnals on Sunday morning.

On A Monday Morning

The sky melts from blue to
tangerine near the horizon line;
sprinkles of stars
struggle, fading back to night
so they may sleep
on the other side of the globe.

The sun rises and stretches,
throwing majesty at all corners
of the morning, and announcing
its blinding ascent to
Awake with bird chirp-songs.

I absorb the breaking day
in waves as the ground drinks
the dotted dew off the wet grass.

I have not slept in the night,
hungry for the clockwork
potential of an infant tomorrow.

The Whitehorse Winter

I chose Whitehorse because of the blistering cold and hour-miles of seclusion. I pioneered myself a cheap, forgotten miner’s cabin and hermited there for a winter, encouraging myself to write. Often, my eyes wore tired of the pale blind of the empty white page, and I sauntered—caped deep under an itchy flannel blanket—to the porch I kept shoveled and cocooned into the old oak rocking chair there. I tended over my wounded words while I rocked, pretending my steam-breath was perique pipe smoke. By spring, I had mustered a thick beard and not much else. I spent no other winters in Whitehorse.

Leaving Again

I tell her
crackling-stream eyes
and twittering frown
I am leaving again.
She believes me
each time I lie
about finally going.
I have turned her
into my younger brother.

I teased him on purpose.
He asked me to play,
plot our new adventure
excited after I agreed,
then frustrate and sigh at me;
I built clusters of mini-chores
between my yes’s and our playing.
I made him wait,
stuffing the in-between
with dozens of ‘just let me’s
and ‘right before’s, tightening
the tension of his trust.

Now, I tell her
drooping brow and
blank slate cheeks
I am leaving again,
toeing the tight-line
of her frail faith in me
to actually leave her.

Cartoons

I have turned your name
into a sort of music,
a jingle for a smile shop,
and lost in you merry melodies
I turn into a cartoon
stereotype. Suddenly
your skin is milk-cream
and I am a starving cat,
but there are no saucers
waiting at my midnight door.
After we say goodnight,
banished to the solitary
staleness of my bed,
my eyes spill under the sheets
looking for the stains
of you left in my mattress.
I linger awake, hungry to smell
your scalp and sleep-sweat
soft across my pillows,
clutching at even the giggling
ghosts we have planted here
deep inside the box springs.

The Morning Fence

The snap and lock
or doors outside
muffle through
the morning fence
we built from sleep
and our own closed
bedroom door.

In my roommate's black
tempur-pedic bean bag chair
we watch Ben Foster playing
Eli, a special kid, on that show.

You sigh and nuzzle closer
to my gray, sweatshirt-covered
chest, readjusting your neck,
trying to get comfortable enough
to pay attention and relax.

Neglecting the screen, I move
to notice the new space
for your head. You bob
with each breath I subdue
like a confused puppy on its side.

I want you to hear my heart
alive in me, drumming along
aloud in my ears, burning
for attention with its eagerness
for your delicate attention.

I am nervous, wondering
if I am breathing too hard,
hoping you hear heartbeats
resounding through me.
I wait

until your breathing slows,
you collapse in a line,
dropping still from head to feet,
relaxing into me to sleep.
I stop watching your head
to find Ben Foster has left
the scene, ending the episode.

Paranoid and nervous with the drunkenness of a crush,
I hope only that you have not decided to ignore our splashes
in quiet chemistry through flirted looks and stabs at intimacy.

We stumble on the brink of conversation,
the veins in your cheek burn and bulge,
I slide my hands against each other
trying to easy the corpse numbness there.

A red LED display burns
numbers into the dark
of the sleeping bedroom.

Night has sprung again
upon the restless,
limping through heavy eyes

and the sore mistakes
weighing on the rest-worn.
Tonight we ignore the blazing

race of time, together
we will curl into sleep,
dreaming without burden.

The ancient carny jargon
spins tired ticket promises

of stuffed prizes for cheap
kids' games, there is a winner

in every family filtering down
the dusky neon blitzes and

torn awnings of the faded midway,
each pregnant with fraudulent hopes

for something classic or genuine,
their wallets bleed to satisfy

the side-show hunger and
candy-apple curiosities.