Selected Works - February 2025



Switcher
2/13/25

In the coffee-brown endlessness, soft chiffon 
blooms like the ray through a thin husk of corn. 

If Degas could only ask a young girl to freeze 
in a Grand Jeté for hours, he probably would. 

So where is your head turned, at this exhalation-
hour? What is that little aria between the fingers

of your left hand? Held only the few seconds apart,
as though nervously strung to intersect with one

another. And they’re in darkness, despite the way
that the eagerness of fresnel lantern is so evidently

upon you. How does such a thing happen? When
does the painter resolve to leave your own body 

in shadow, even when that’s not the case? A fear
that plumes of fabric will fall even in the portrait. 


After Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, “Switcher,” 2013



Heartland Visitation
2/11/25

A down-on-his-luck schoolboy was returning home when he heard
a voice emerging from the herb-garden window of a neighbor’s house. 
        What’s up little man, said the voice, as if it were some long-lost
        family member attempting to feign familiarity for the sake of reputation. 
The schoolboy could tell that the owner of the voice was not the owner
of the home, but also that they were the only person in the house at the time.
        One could not explain how he knew such a thing. Hello? he called
        into the herb-garden window. The hissing of the cicadas was becoming
exponentially louder so he inferred that the individual inside the house might
have had some trouble hearing him. Thus he opens the door and finds God sitting
        cross-legged at the dinner table. It wasn’t a particularly long or elegant 
table, and the boy could not figure out how he wanted to describe God’s attire to
the reader of the poem, even if he wanted to. God looks up reassuringly from
        his bamboo knitting needles and asks the schoolboy: Hard day, boy?
        The boy nods even though he could not hear what God had asked him,
over the immense roaring of the cicadas. Outside the house, the moon hangs
low like a wet shirt. Finally settling at the table, the boy asks a serious question 
        about his purpose in the world. He shakes with excitement and the plates
        begin to rattle because of the shaking. In a tiny voice he releases it into
the summer air, where he knows it’ll be scooped up by somebody else before it
is answered or even listened to. God laughs inaudibly and dissipates like a prayer.



Cali, The Larkin House
2/10/25

  1. The sense of recalling some disconnect with a past self. 
  2. Spider-webs on the rusted iron lattice of the well, in the garden. 
  3. Fondness for tree aeoniums. This fondness too, as a reminder. 
  4. Indiscernible, like a flood of diagraphs. Never written. 
  5. The striated feathers of the birds in a circular puzzle. 
  6. Some perched on branches painted into thin air, suspended. 
  7. For the sake of radial symmetry. 
  8. There’s a mitten on the ground. 
  9. In front of the metal sculpture of a bird by Calle Principal. 
  10. Finishing the puzzle in a day.

  1. The striated hours. The remorse gathered between.
  2. Like rows of milk-white. The time on matching watches.
  3. Except yours bluer. The sleeping bad because you dream only.
  4. Of a house, where you used to live except empty. 
  5. A prism carved from its center. The striated air. 
  6. Uninhabited. Walking the perimeter cautiously. 
  7. Walking the garden. The fastening aperture.
  8. Of the day with you. And what feels like all of them. 
  9. At once. Recalling again. The last couple of pieces belonging.
  10. To the pileated woodpecker. The child in the garden. 


For Cali


Author’s Note:


I launched my website on the tenth of this month, after completing my research and writing process for Silently, Witnessing. It was the first for a reason. It is one of the most important pieces I’ve written to date, and explores a dialogue of cultural erasure in a way which has allowed me to reevaluate the relevancy of my writings to follow. I feel that this sort of employment (writing on the present world) is the true vigor of poetry. The necessity of Bob Kaufman and Mahmoud Darwish and June Jordan.

Without mincing words, I am so evidently privileged. I am fundamentally unmarginalized and guided by both a will and a responsibility to learn. In this way the month has taught me to recall the balance of my inward and outward. My poems will always help me understand my own identity––senses, memories––but they contain this more innate faculty to translate the worldly. To illustrate. Russell Atkins can signify death or wind with the mere placement of an apostrophe, after all. 

Over these past few months I’ve also been studying in a workshop under the instruction of the author and poet Iris Dunkle. She’s presented us with the curious challenge of poetry exercises unique to each day in February–– one of which being where the third of this month’s selections originated. The first piece is an ekphrastic, while the second is a fable-like comedy-in-progress inspired by the work of Russell Edson. Some of the challenges included approaching unspeakable events through brevity, translating an older piece of ours “from English to English,” and writing inspired by the scientific mystery of “blobs” which appeared on beaches in Newfoundland throughout September. The efficacy of this practice is clear, even in its occasional humorousness. 

This month’s archive yields 30 pages against January’s 24, which I am supposing is a positive. Though quantity is of no importance, I feel as though this month’s poems (on average) were more distant from their inspiration, though perhaps I was myself. I didn’t read nearly as much. I’ve been dedicating less time to poetry against my analytical writing and song-making. Some diversity in medium is almost certain to inviograte my sense of purpose with art, so I am eager for March. My three-part Vanderhoef Series is set to be complete, where I write poems about three separate jazz concerts each witnessed from the same table in a studio theatre; the namesake of the trio.

Admittedly, it will be a relief to return to “un-prompted” poetry and explore more personal topics as the workshop comes to a conclusion. I have recalled how much I adore the practice of dedicating pieces, and want to express my love for those people who inspire me. Often. Thank you for taking the time to read. I’m grateful that you’re here and can’t wait to introduce the groundwork of some collection-related news in the coming months (if all goes well). To be candid, I am withholding some of my favorite pieces of each month for this reason. Wouldn’t it be a shame were the movie trailer to spoil the plot? 






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