PIANO KEYS UNDERNEATH A RUINED MANICURE

remember those days when your nail

turned black after a smash

fell off exposing crusty dead skin

 

remember when you could swing off a roof

hold your breath so long you passed out

played keyboards

in an all-girl garage band


HORSE GUY 

There was this guy from the mountains

he barely showered had a beard

didn’t wash his clothes—rugged like his boots

 He rode to my cabin on a horse

 

The appealing factor was

he stared at me from the end of the bar

 with half a smile and a secret

The first night he smelled like pine sap

he lived in the woods

second night I wondered if it was urine

 third night he was gone

rode his horse somewhere new

or I had moved on to the artist from town

 

Horse guy left an impression

scuff marks on the foot of my bedsheets

something rough in the air


{Horse Guy published in Journal of Undiscovered Poets: Issue # 2, January 2021} https://www.undiscoveredpoets.com/

QUARANTINE { written at the beginning of the CoVid quarantine in April 2020 when I barely left my house}

Coffee grind dark roast toast melted butter melted brain

this is a day without capital letters there are masked people crawling

by in the rain I want to be outside in the rain crawling by watching myself

crawl by in the rain six feet away from myself crawling like the delivery

man Oliver he’s Oliver we texted in his store about substitutions

substitute everything with dark roast so I can crawl by myself in

the rain and watch you crawl by in the rain six feet away