Monster

She knew he had eyes like television static
Never the same, except that they imparted no message,
felt no sympathy,
and held her captive,
like red python eyes before a strike.

She imagined that his heart beat savagely against his ribcage,
as if it hoped to be set free.
His atrioventricular and sinoatrial nodes sparked out of time,
sparked so fiercely that the burning he felt in his belly
was real fire, eating away his cardiac tissue.

She imagined that when his heart gave out,
he would go on living – or whatever it was he did.

She imagined that he filed his teeth down
like a rodent
in order that he might maintain a semblance of humanity.

She imagined that fingernails and toenails grew
as if pulled from his flesh,
that underneath his gooseflesh he could,
at any moment,
sprout spines the length of his body.

And she imagined that
everything but the television static eyes
was just an illusion she made
to make herself feel better
when he didn’t want to be around anymore.

A Budding Existentialist

There’s a certain point at which you just can’t ignore the evidence: the moon is the wrong shape and the world is spinning counterclockwise and you’ve picked the wrong major, the wrong future, the wrong boyfriend.

There comes a point in everyone’s life when nothing makes sense and the only reasonable question to ask is “what am I doing at this party?”

And that’s a valid question.
After all, it’s all allegory,
and what’s the difference between baskets of bread and fish,
and red Solo cups brimming with domestic?
The coat of many colors can just as easily be Bradford’s signed jersey;
that epic flood could have been the ice storm that ravaged campus, canceling finals and taking the trees with it when it receded.

“What am I doing at this party?” you’re thinking,
but there’s still that ping-pong ball in your solo cup,
and its contents need to be drunk.

All of this is wrong, though.
The shape of the moon.
Your major, your boyfriend,
and that new pair of shoes you bought last week.

What are you doing at this party?
What is this party doing to you?

For Margaret

Seasons change,
and every limping day passes unremarked, it seems.

But who can afford to be unremarkable?

Autumn brings with it the whistle of escaping heat –
Oklahoma is finally finished steaming through.
It brings dust on the breeze and swirling dried leaves rasping
across porous concrete, still swollen and dripping with the warmth of summer.

Soon winter’s bony fingers will beckon,
and we will run headlong into cutting wind and the treachery of icy sidewalks,
to the grey infinity that is a constant overcast, and the dull loneliness that comes from missing the sun.

And sunny California waits with open arms and an open mind –
a blank slate, an open book.
California waits with a spring come months early,
if you can only outrun


the winter.

Swan

Midnight,
and he nimbly weaves a tiny swan
from what’s left of his notebook paper.
He proffers it in cupped hands;
joy lights up his face.