Published Poetry

[from Zephyrus 2006, winner of the Geoffrey McCelvey Memorial Award]

Me, In the Image of my Mother

Finally I just gave up and became my mother,
her endless questions filled my small throat
and I opened my mouth and heard her voice.
I threw my head back, mimicked her deep laugh,
from the pit of her stomach, my stomach,
the stomach they sliced open like a ripe tomato
to pull my five pound bloody body out, barely
breathing. I slipped like a slick silver fish from one
existence to another. She guided my hand
while I learned the curves of my name, played with my hair
while I fell asleep in her lap, told me about sex
after I bled for the first time. My chest sprouted
A-cups just like hers, but more firm, and my hair
began to curl. At twenty, I stole her
young green eyes, her love for margaritas, her
smooth slender fingers. My eyes learned the
playful art of seduction. In church today,
during the last hymn, I held her hand. I felt
her bones small between my fingers, and I
think that someday I will become her mother too.

________________________________________

[from Zephyrus 2005]

Aging Bricks

She was afraid to seem like
a single brick – square edged
and deeply lonely, but positioned

between thousands of others just like her.
She blew out thirty candles
in her mind. She closed black-lined eyes

to make a birthday wish. She swore
she’d be more like a vacuum
this decade, sucking men from the

corners of bars like dirt.
If she found one she remotely liked
she’d keep him. If not, she’d simply

empty her bag and begin again.
She puts on her best outfit.
Her legs are brown and smooth

beneath the short white skirt
and feels twenty-three again.
The faint crows feet around her eyes

have deepened. She applies anti-aging cream
to every part of her skin
and blinks back tears when she

notices cellulite dimples laughing
on the backs
of her formerly flawless

legs. She hopes her brick has the
loosest mortar. She wants
to stand out, to stand out from

the wall of the other desperate
thirty-somethings
and cause blood to stir and boil

and pump straight to limp penises and
fill them with lust.
Because that hunger can be very

close to love
like a foul ball is almost
a homerun, like an expiration date

is mainly a guideline, not a
hardnosed rule: Like sometimes a no
can sound almost like a yes.