i. (before)

Your sorrow

  not knowing itself,
       just outside of
my reach–

I want to inhale it
   from your bent form,
         to siphon the sting
and to know—

My child born in light
    I would sing you to morning 
          if it would spark 
and reveal you–

The angels of night
     tender in your pain
          caress your back
under the pile of blankets­–

While down the hall
    my heart remembers
          your shining eyes
waiting to be born again.

ii. (hospital)

I watched you laughing

you did not see me 

nor the small hairline in

my hope that mended 

in that moment.

When you wore

the silly headband and

played four square with

checkers and vamped 

with the blow up ball...

My heart was sinewed,

so cautiously mending 

I did not stir the air,

did not risk movement;

I cannot stay this still.

So when you come back

I will not hold my breath,

I will exhale into these moments, 

and let my lungs expand with

all we have and cannot hold.

iii. (again

You are untethered again

my life becomes smaller

wants recede, there is only now–

this moment when you laugh

when you disappear

when I can comfort you

when I cannot reach you–

I open my hands, 

see they are empty.

So it is I understand  

I have no power here,

no illusions to soften 

my impotence.

I want to gather a plush lie around me,

but my damp body chills

as droplets of water gather

on the unprotected tiles.

(first published by Tangled Locks Journal, Spring 2022)

my transition is not yet so distant that i have forgotten

all gestures of affection : the language underlying the heart   

the unnecessary detritus of human form : flesh

meeting love as flowers : thirsty and fertile : voracious  

without my waist cinched and carbon strapped :

before my hunger was compressed as data : i spoke

blooms sweet on my blossoming tongue : i spun

the scent of sun when i crouched to the grass : a world

i could bend before : my discs were fused and

glazed : want rolling in my now sealed mouth :

though my lips no longer spread : they sear

with heat like blistered atoms : phantoms limbs

courting remembrance : look : you see only

my reflection in chrome : i believe : once my skin : i

do not know why i have come :

(first published by Neologism Review,  October 2024)

Our glances dance with

innominate recognition

where words are songs 

descants spun from dust

pacing the pulse

of this ancient pavane.

This is how we touch

our orbit weightless

not a trail of fingers

but tempos teasing the

quickening meter of eyes

moving across galaxies

towards the moment their

collision creates new stars.

When I met the world on this day
(when my mother carried half 
the years I hold today),

my welcome was shaped 
by the fatal fall of Camelot,

its dreams taken to the sea on
the waves of pirate radio,

on the receding footfall that
had marched for freedom,

and the hard rain that would rend
a stone wall while fecund smoke gave 
rise to acres of swaying souls.

The whole of the world rested 
in my mother's arms with me
(I did not hear the songs of
half a million strong);

her arms sang to me of
only this moment where
promise is born -

later would be time enough
for the work of being human,
in which we are torn and meliorated 
and must find our way home.

Now that my mother's song has 
joined the wind, I understand that 
she did not hold the world for me -

she held me for the lost
and broken world, 
that on my way home I might 
lend my voice to hers,

lend my voice to
all the songs raised up
to mend the world.

(first published by The Pointed Circle, Spring 2022)

My mother loved infomercials—

zucchini spiralizers egg slicers

electric coffee mugs buckwheat

pillows and light clappers hocked

by late night screen thieves lining

metal merchant displays with

multiple exclamations—

AS SEEN ON TV!!!!

Better for me to summon those

expired ghosts than the shadows of

her excised breast, the paramedics

as they helped us lift her from the

floor, the dilaudid lining her

purse, and the myriad ways in

which I failed her, the most

egregious being that I could not

provide her the peace to die.

So I turn the channel to her

full bosoms, late night scrabble

matches, pee-inducing laughter,

her face when she held my new

babies—I rewatch Christmas Eve

midnights waiting for the animals

to talk and the New Year’s she

drank so much she hugged the

bathroom floor until dad said get up you bum, I got a bet on you!

I think about Brownie badges

graham crackers with Jif & grape

jam planting geraniums lovingly

plaited braids and ginzu knives.

(first published by Chariot Press, June 2024)

You kill her slowly,

suddenly

your scythe tenderly

attuned to all the

soft places where

you lived when

 you loved her.

You excise her faith,

milk her breasts

and bury her spine

by the tree in

the yard where

you carved that

you love her.

Her eyes scooped,

by talons dropped

in a field where they

are now cornflowers

staring at the sun -

and oh, how

 it loves her.

So you burn her hair,

inhale the silt

and fill your jaws 

with all that was;

with all the worlds

you lost in

 loving her.

(first published by American Writers Review/San Fedele Press, July 2022)

gentle breaths

my lucent girl

all the years i have

watched you sleep

and here this…

green hair against 

your white pillow like 

snow headed branches,

under weighted lids

your eyes rich soil

i have heard your

breath whisper the

secrets of gravity,

your face an easel

waiting to paint the day

i have sung you to

dreams while the 

earth turned,

when fire encroached

before the rains came -

i have loved you 

in the soft silence

between hours,

entreating hope

to follow you

and shelter you,

formed and formless

as constant as breath,

an arm of branches

green under the snow

(first published by Poetry Breakfast, September 2024)

David playing the Pig & Whistle 

years younger than I can conjure

My coloratura cords caressing the

listening pews of Old First Church concerts

Licking the whip off Viennese lattes after 

Conservatory classes in Tart to Tart klatches 

Pushing strollers through Children’s Fairyland

in search of marionettes and Dragon Slides

At Mountain Lake Park my toddlers stomping with

tree bark dinosaurs clutched in juice box fingers

I see them everywhere, sidewalk specters 

specters perched on stone 

stools in Stow Lake's Chinese Pavilion tending

pinky toe blisters sprung from new sneakers

Two wedding aisles I walked and watched plummet

like the Bay Bridge deck in the Loma Prieta quake

Bruising the packed sand at Ocean Beach dances

our bare heels circling seaweed scarred bonfires

The Highway 17 house where we lost power for a

month and showered under a candled holding tank 

Cheap lamb curry before New Year's Eve with the Dead 

at Oakland Coliseum when I threw up half the way home

The sushi bar at Ebisu when Kristin's husband said we 

looked like two dogs that had tipped over a garbage can

My second trimester when I bled and my girlfriends wept on

speakerphone and also when it stopped—

(first published by January House Literary Journal, Spring/Summer 2025)

(or COVID 19th Nervous Breakdown)

I met him in New York

as he waited backstage

            like an eager fan

(or a stalker),

in my globe glow

dressing room

            I leaned in too closely,

too confident.

I was swept in

our whirlwind encounter

            and did not notice

when the air turned dry.

He wanted my breath

for himself and

            wooed my thoughts

away from me to darkness;

if I dared look away

his fist closed my neck

            reminding me that

I was kept.

Gaslit and alight

I fled his promise

            (and proximity),

sedating my suspicions.

From one coast

to another he tracked me

            from a distance,

undeniable.

I muted my trail

but he clung to my scent

            as I swallowed the fear

I could no longer taste.

When he dulled of the chase

he tendered my life

            mired in promise

but broken.

His stain lingers still

in my chest

            bound by rib

our intercostal contract -

my air for his mark,

slipped under my pillow;

            the shaded hollow

graying on the scan.

And now I count days,

and at night consume weeks

            as the months tighten closed

where I let him come in.

(first published by Cathexis Northwest Press, Spring 2022)

"Do you have PTSD?", my daughter's therapist asks me on FaceTime. My tongue trips. I say that I don't know - there was trauma, but later, not the tender span of their purgatory. My hell hasn't earned a name; my palms cannot cup such compassion under the rostrum of remorse, impenetrable, nacre casing pearls.

Mother protects her young; mama bear, sceptered lioness, pouched marsupial, snowy owls like bomber pilots.

That I was injured in the fireline holds no reprieve, my impotence bears my children's wounds. How then do I name the burning house from which I could not loose them until our lungs swallowed ash? I did not see the arsonists - named father, named uncle - as they played with matches, biding their time. They hid in smoke plumes, savoring the smoldering saplings, urging livid roots.

I wrapped my children in water wrung sheets and rushed the doorframe as it cauterized the ground. Skin mends but flesh is loath to heal; it requires remembrance. In my children's subdermal heat lives my failure. The therapist's question hangs open on its slack jaw. Did you burn?, is what I think she's asking.

Does it matter?,

my reply.

(first published by Passengers Journal, Winter 2023)

 My ribs

           are collapsing around

          the muscle they are bound to protect,

laying lifeless as bones stripped of marrow, a diagram

               of the desert.

               I hear everything

                   as from a distance except

       your voice, wind in my ears. As we await

      the appointed time you are both saved and gone; here and

              already far away.

                 I want to be

                   gravity, pulling you to the 

                    earth; a centripetal force begging your

              body to remain with mine, here, in the center of

                 our knowing.

              Let me bury your

 toes in the sand and pray for a

mirage of water to weight the grains; a miracle in this

      arid outpost lest you free your feet and walk into the beyond,

                away from me.

                         But your freedom

                   is no longer here in a body,

                 on the earth, in these lives with their utterly

                                  convincing mass. I am holding air, Dad, and you are

                         becoming vapor.

(first published in Mill Valley Literary Review, Winter 2022)

for GPG–

  an Angel of the Arts

Born into the valley of the blue moon
   nestled between twin orbs that illumined

the gloaming ofDecember's sky—

Shangri-La was there,

   the crook of mother's arm

breath singing against her breast,

   cradled ears attuned to first paradise

you carried her song

   through years of days,

diapasons of memory

   finding their voice in your own

you silkspun beauty,

   worlds of words weaving

staves and stages

   eclosing like wings from

their chrysalids

as you set farther forth,

   a red haired lass became home

and a hearth in the widening 

   world where together you 

crafted a plenteous life—

   of brushstrokes and bowings, 

of mortar and bones, 

   and travels and tales,

as you lifted the world abreast

(first published by The Penelope Review, March 2025)

Splintered

I dissimulate my 

Fractured bones

Dancing my skeleton

A marionette

Convulsing to a taiko drum.

I am Olympia 

Trilling Les Oiseaux while

Hoffman tells his tales

My lyric lilt

Obfuscating the rattle

Of sawdust in my throat.

A finely tuned grift conceals

My aporetic appearance 

Swindler - charlatan -

Sleight of hand 

Look under each shell

I am not there.

My corporeal form 

Mutinously masks 

The dybbuk who

Hides behind

Singing my flesh

Its axiomatic refrain.

It is the opposite of death 

The body persists 

Presents as a self

But my self has taken leave

What you see now is the

Star it left behind.

(first published by Mill Valley Literary Review, Winter 2022)

state of being devastated, from Medieval Latin devastationem, noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin devastare, "to lay waste completely."

Today I sat on a word just to feel its roundness under my cheeks as its sibilants softly surrounded my seat. It seemed an absurd thing to do in the middle of the day, but I really needed a change of scenery. I was fed up with sentences in general, and specifically with frantic phrases making wrong turns and getting totally lost (not to mention the incessant whining coming from all the punctuation that was just hanging around and frankly contributing very little to my quality of life). What I am getting at is that I was stuck. Or maybe just bored - or lonely. Whatever the reason, I needed respite. Everything around me was angular; I drank jagged water and everything looked like

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, if it had been painted by

Jackson Pollack.

I wanted to leap into language; to feel compersion for all the voluptuous vowels soaping one another's backs, and join the consonants vying for pithy primacy in rap battles and poetry slams. But here's the thing - words know when you are using them for catharsis, and while they may be all too happy to oblige, if they think for one minute that you are manipulating them, they will simply flip you off. As if they hadn't danced on your fingers just last Tuesday, and swam over your tongue all weekend. They will stare you down fish-eyed and go back to whatever they were doing before you rattled their cage.

And so it was that I found myself inescapably distraught, watching the same reel loop over and over, words blocking the exits and flicking the lights and throwing popcorn at my head. Until finally I sat on one. The rest frenetically fled, zipping every which way - it was like a bloodbath, or an angry bowl of alphabet soup. But my word - the one I sat on - swayed like a sylph, all calm and cool and crisp and mystical. She could have just bucked me off; perhaps she sensed that I needed a hot minute to breathe, that I was suffocating in loss that could not speak. So we swayed and bobbed and all the other words were far away and a quiet rose up like a Kraken, but merciful and colored with gold flecks. And the breaths started coming easy, as me and my word and the Kraken swayed and grokked the gestalt of release. It went on like that until light became dark and became

light again.

And when the light was directly overhead I slid down the slender silhouette of my word. I had no words to thank her, but she totally got that. And the Kraken turned out to be quite cool himself - he said that words would come in my stillness, or some new age shit like that, but I appreciated the positive vibe. So I took my leave and headed home, in the direction I remembered it to be. My word fizzed like a phantom limb as I navigated the neighborhoods. My eyes drank familiarity and were sated by the same streets as held my leaving. My pace quickened, all muscle memory, no fizzing, no phantom, just toes and heels and toes and heels and I crossed the threshold of my door. I wandered weary to my room, asleep before the bed knew what hit it. I dreamed in letters and ephemeral hues and random snapshots sequencing themselves. And when I woke it was already dark. I stumbled to the sink and splashed water on my face; looking up I saw my word in the mirror, then she winked and she flashed and was gone. It took me a minute to realize what had happened. By the time I thought to bid her back, I'd forgotten

her name.

(first published by Drunk Monkeys,  January 2023)

When the nurse wakes me up at 5:30am to ply me with electrodes

I literally scream my way out of a dream. Apparently Thorazine

can pull your QT like taffy, and if it gets too long you’re out of luck.

I pass my EKG and am awarded a gelatin capsule with a hundred

tiny pearls in its casing, a pharmaceutical crown. They give you

the Benadryl first so you don’t fly out of the cuckoo’s nest when they start

the drip. In other fun facts, it turns out

squeezing Thorazine through your veins makes your nose

so stuffed that, even as the drip pulls you under, you can’t sleep

because you can’t breathe. Bummer. But it’s okay

because this morning I’m listening to the Rattlecast stream

with guest poet Ron Koertge, telling us that he is standing in the doorway

at 86 between the finite and the infinite inviting words through— a fine thing

to be doing at 86. Lips upturned, I drift.

(first published by Anacapa Review, May 2026, Volume 4, Number 3)

~for Sadie

She does not know her voice

nor her mirrored face—

When she unfurls her fist a stranger’s

hand hangs from her wrist, her

unrecognizable life.

She remembers the girl

she was, in Gymboree days: tuna crust

clutching pixie in a purple

jumper riding the paint-peeled

rocking horse outside of Ace Hardware.

The world that still made sense then.

In her apartment, she paces in panic

at her foreign reflection

over the bathroom sink

and the borrowed hands

at her sides and the walls too close.

She stumbles over the threshold

into midnight Oakland, torn

pajamas, unbuckled Birkenstocks,

hurtling towards the 29th Street underpass.

She rounds corners

without her glasses

or phone or any semblance of a compass

to navigate her return. It does not matter,

as long as she outpaces the fugue.

Past the encampment tents she realizes

she’s lost, back in her body now

frantic to retrace its steps—

urchin clasping a worn bear

and willing the landscape

to reassemble. There is some

preserved part that somehow holds

the whole. Survivor, artist, poet.

Beloved child. Purple princess

on a magic horse

of an unimagined future,

where she’d find her way home.

(first published by 3 Elements Literary Review, Winter 2026, Issue no. 49)

I sing softly as I caress your hair,

which has grown improbably

long and white—

talisman strands of silk. Later

I will find them on your

sweaters as I fold them into

bags. Under your sink as I box

your toiletries. On my nightclothes.

My slippers.

Your lips are so dry.

I fill the morphine dropper

again and coax out little pearls of

water. The hospice nurses

are at a scarce pandemic distance—

but I am here, fumbling with

this smattering of palliative

gems they left before receding

into frozen Facetimes. You

hold my eyes as you bite down

on the dropper. It takes me days

to realize your gaze was a caress.

You carry me cupped against you.

It would have been the apartment

in East Brunswick I know only

from faded photos, before we

moved to Highland Park. The

vibration of your voice stills me

against your chest as you pace the

length of the house, humming the

lullaby from South Pacific, soft

against my fontanelle.

Your fulgent eyes—sun

through a stained glass saint—

are fixed. I trace the path with

my own eyes and see only

the half-cracked door. I think that

mom must be ready for you now.

I cannot see her, but your eyes rest

there. Where I think she is.

I am afraid of what will escape

if I sing the final notes you sang

to me, trilling on vous m’aimez—

I love you. There is only the bus

down the street, the drip

in the bathroom sink, Rosie's

paw pads tapping the wood floor.

I cannot exhale.

(first published by The New York Poetry Society/Milk Press, August 2024)

I have collected your arrows from the nest of 

my limbs, extracted through flesh and moss, 

each gape flaring then tightening under the sutures 

of time. I have laid them each beside the next beside 

the songs you left suspended in dew. I count them 

before sleep and tend them in the escaping hours. My 

clever archer, naught left to chance to heal to seal—

broadheads steeped in honey in venom in love in aconite,

you tune the nocking point, stroke the fletching and release—

shafts plausibly deniable beneath my matted feathers. 

(first published by Cetera, April 2026. "The Body Keeps the Score" issue. All rights retained by the author)

i disappeared in a sandstorm at 17 fleeing Oberlin and bulimia

after two semesters underwater for a year in family court

saving my children breast cancer taking mom and then Jan into

an abyss when i left my son halfway across the country to mend

at the mercy of iv poles pacing the halls of migraine

hospitalizations scaling a firewall when my failed marriage

chased me with razor blades off a cliff after my brother

shed his skin leaving only a forked tongue on the road under a

pitch veil when dad died in my arms before we found home

inside a vortex as madness courted my daughter with no curfew

now I fade so incrementally it is almost imperceptible

like dust motes gradually rendered invisible by shifting light rays

someday soon you will look at me and see moth’s wings

a leafy spine a wind picked ember a flash in your periphery

and then nothing at all

(first published by SEXTET, December 2025)

To Flacco The Eurasian Eagle-Owl Who Escaped The Central Park Zoo

When His Enclosure Was Vandalized (March 15, 2010 – February 23, 2024) 

you took your leave while keepers

trailed your glorious year of freedom,

your unproved wings lifting off from

the West Side, finding form on a

jazzy wind to the Harlem Meer—

now obscured in aged oak, you spy

us, our necks pirouetting to

capture you with iPhone eyes—

we pace and point, huddle, extol

your escape, as you perch unmoved,

out of reach of expectations—

your plumicorns barely stir at the murder

of crows crying threats in black

circles over our pre-dusk flurry—

we agape, seeing ourselves

anew, turnpike strangers

seeing all the exits we passed and

did not take—

                                    When I could no longer speak to fate

                        nor answer my unsanctioned desire,
            I sought Amelia's escape from the

    binding earth and its narrow sight.

This is how I came to skim clouds

    to surrender the weight of earth's
            claim; gravity believes the angle of

                        words as they fall at our feet, while

                                    the sky bides its time, waiting for truth.

(first published in the inaugural issue of Compass Rose Literary Journal, Winter 2023)

I remember your

long white hair draping

my shoulders as each
held the other’s form

our breath joined

how we tangoed

with time as we wove

the duple meter of

memory underfoot

hot in the shivering air

the playground we

raised in our reverie

with ecstatic exploration

with howling mirth

ephemeral in its end

the rising wave

of your approach and

fading pitch of your

receding reach

a doppler dimming

the abundance in

your eyes and the bite

of my disappearance

when they closed to me

after I had danced in them

and still I cannot parse truth

from illusion where our

shadows cast promise

before you swallowed the light

(first published by The Write Launch,  January 2023)

(wormhole haiku)

seeking my cosmos

you traverse the galaxy

unbound by spacetime

through bent gravity

you tunnel to my mind's eyes

wormholes closed in sleep

you slip through photons

fluctuating quantum foam

to land in my core

our union so dense

not even light can escape

the curve of our forms

we are cosmic strings

bridging the future and past

forming a closed loop

holding this new world

we weave exotic matter

to thread through the walls

we thread fireflies too

these virtual particles

destroyed and reborn

your mouth closes mine          

our throats a single channel

when time collapses

atoms disappear

fireflies flee the choking flue

its walls sucking shut

suddenly expelled

swifter than the race of light

we part untethered

this body and i

a universe of longing

await your return

that when you are here

you might unravel the threads

and bind me to you

(first published by The Ravens Perch,  March 2023)

(my marriage & divorce in 26 haiku)

we met at Bumble

where we ate breakfast for lunch

and danced with our eyes

I touched his shoulder                                                                

with an ease that felt bashert -

as if we’d moved time…

later in the loo

(after I‘d excused myself)

my panties came off -

in the parking lot

urgently against my car,

his hand raised my hem -

when he reached bare skin

his eyes began to glisten

(as did his fingers)

rapt with wonder and

bemused incredulity,

he purred, who are you -

Madonna or whore?

(the rhetorical question

of duality)

we spent the next night

finding G-d in his bedroom,

and named ourselves love

we wandered in awe,

found home in hotel rooms where

everything was new…

life was wrought with growth,

and with ardent transcendence

requiring expanse -

so we built a house,

and explored its dark corners

to find our shadows

we played with fire then;

clear cut the brush for safety,

but still were consumed

we forgot our names -

even before the chuppah,

we had gone astray

after that it rained,

our dreams laden with water

as we bore the weight

when everything broke

the sky sobbed for forty days

and I built a raft

I breathed buoyancy

covered my arms in feathers

and tried not to drown

I washed onto shore,

my salt eyes lidded and cracked

and collapsed on the sand

I slept forty nights

and woke with wet weeds for hair

and seashells for skin

the weeds dried and fell -

seashells disintegrating

as I walked blindly

I cannot tell you

exactly what happened next -

you won’t understand

but as time drew on

I came to forgive myself

for the fires and flood,

and shed the layers

of my bone-weighted journey

like Salome’s veils

I now stand naked,

shrouded and swathed in the light

of a source unseen -

it speaks of itself,

the wages of survival,

and the hand of G-d…

the force that moves me

undulates and surfaces

in my waking dreams

and my path unfolds

solitary and embraced

by the arms of truth.

Note: 26 is the gematric number, being the sum of the Hebrew characters (Hebrew: יהוה‎) being the name of the G-d of Israel – YHWH (Yehowah). The Greek Strongs number G26 is "Agape", which means "Love".

(first published by Cathexis Northwest Press, April 2022)

i am neither the seed  

      nor the fruit -

You water

me in the in

       between;

between love and

        the weeds

where i hide,

(supine and

       reckless)

i forgot my name

        when i fell from grace -

when i choked on fire,

and scorched

         the scabrous earth;

until under the ash a

         new name formed

spelled in hair

and bone:

Hineini.-

i am here, Elohai,

          G-d of my ancestors

but my eyes transpose

the landscape;

            and i am lost -

the rutted road

            reads empty as

i search the near distance

astounded by ghosts,

            and my own limpid hands;

we are here and not here

            my mother, my father,

their daughter;

we must be in Gehinnom

            awaiting our trials -

if so, dismiss our missteps

            and restore us

not as before

but in numinous form

            for the world to come -

allow me safe passage

            to follow them home;

but if i cannot pass

extend me this moment

             in precious purgatory

to lay eyes once again upon

            all that was lost -

do not lift me from this place

to lay me down alone to goodbye,

            and goodbye and goodbye....   

seal me instead in a beautiful lie

            where i can't see the end,

where i rise from the weeds

and there are no ghosts

            and there are no ashes

and i remember my name

            the one they gave me

(the one You took with them) -

and i will wait - and i will wait

            for them to find me,

and ask where i've been hiding

            and how long it has been

and how i fell so far behind -

i will answer only that i am here,

            waiting,  Hineini.

(first published by The Write Launch, January 2023)

I will sketch space

        around my invisible steps

stave the need to marry

        my footsteps to the earth;

I know where I walk

        unweighted and deliberate

I have sown forests

        have sung each leaf onto

each branch that raised its

        spiny hand to me,

and have sunk to my knees

        in the forgiving soil

making no imprint and

        no sound;

it does not matter -

        the rain will remember how

it fell upon me

        and the oaks will vibrate

where I sang,

        my silent lips lending

urgency to

        the wind,

and I will know

        where I have been.

(first published by Lone Mountain Literary Society, September 2022)

There is rice in your hair
and we are laughing;
your seat backs up 
to the window where 
the sun washes your red highlights 
(under which there is surely more rice)
and we are solving life.

Three conversations 
(which all happen to

be taking place at once) unfold,
our secret language indecipherable,
the chattering of seagulls,

arms sweeping the room.
We are loud.

I am not conscious of myself, 
in this depth there is only the

current and who can say which 
one of us moves it?  
We are bobbing

beyond the swells,

blissfully untethered.

But you drifted too far,

and I cannot hear you

hiding in the stillness

as my words rise

damp and hollow,

condensing

on my cheeks.

I lift my fork in silence,

moving against the weight

of remembrance;

I pause to brush my

hair from my eyes,

and feel the rice

stuck in my bangs.

(first published in The Pointed Circle, Winter 2022)

I was never really asleep—

I’d been waiting for whatever comes after

once upon a time and was frankly worn thin

by admonitions of chasteness

chasing me, as if I were a rabid

dog tipping cans in alleys.

All I sought was release from the untenable

tension of living in a ravenous body

wet with the exertion of denial,

so I retreated to the canopy

of my curtained bed and lay still.

To will-away the want old women adorn with shame,

so young men know it is a prize, I closed my eyes

to the throbbing, waking world and dreamed

forbidden fingers in the pulsing places

under my skin for what

felt like one hundred years—

Until came the day he drew my drapes

and I opened my eyes. The grace of his

prurient gaze releasing me from restraint.

All rejoiced in his valor and piously

sanctioned the fate of our happily ever after—

but he could have been anyone.

(first published by Periwinkle Pelican, January 2026)

The light comes early summer mornings on the eastern seaboard –

I’d forgotten, and the nights that stay warm late under the moon,

and the crickets that seem to sleep neither with the dark nor the sun.

The beauty of the west stuns me – the unexpected angles of

Pacific poppy cliffs perched on the unending landscape -

but driving through late summer Massachusetts (its neighbors so close,

clustered like settlements) breaks my heart.  

The modest tree trunks standing so near one another that leaves share every branch, green and green and green and running out to the road to meet me...

old friend, we remember you, do you?  Remember?  

Riding under the low ceiling of small waving fingers, green walls billow like welcome banners, dust framed in the sun - each speck a world, whispering, we are here! You left, but we are here!

Each world holds a memory, a thousand of them whispering to me of sprinklers and ice cream trucks and sandwiches cut into squares on the table in the yard, the plastic pool spilling onto the blanketed grass under bare feet and swings abandoned as wrinkled hands grab from the top of the pile, mom and nanny and pop and only this moment.  

I thought I left them, and all these moments before we knew the price of time, that each new breath is a trade, that the sandwiches would disappear and even cutting off the crusts couldn't save us from reaching for an empty plate...

But their shadows see me still with my blue and red swimsuit with the gold star, curls bunched around my ears and bread crumbs in the corners of my mouth.  

And I see them too, with shiny hair and pedal pushers, tennis shoes and cat eyed sunglasses, a cold can of beer, a cigarette, their eyes holding everything - they are fading into snapshots that are already gone, but here is a tiny fist crying its first air, a white veil, a new coast, distant calls, loss and loss and loss and the redemption of home.

They sing to me now that they have always been here, that I have traded more time than I have left in front of me, but they will be sitting on their heels in the wet grass when I finally run through the field I cannot see, their arms open - run to us!  Remember?

(first published by Wingless Dreamer, February 2022)

when we fled Vilnius—

long before the golden door

shuttered against the Shoah—

we emerged at Ellis

from bellies of barges

processed with the

            dross of pilgrimage

and mouthed new names

cloistered in tenements

tendering garments

for kishke and rent

we bedded on half sewn seams

and side-stepped sewage to daven

    in schul—

when we stitched over our passage

behind Singers on

rust welted chairs in

the bowels of the Bowery

drowning our ghosts in pickle barrels

            the underworld rumble of

    the IRT sounded

terror under the baseboards

like a distant pogrom haunting

our stagnant lungs as we slept—

and when we chattered

low lengths of Litvak

shouldering swarms

    in kippot and shawls

through the charcoal air

            we finally breathed—

and saw ourselves

     everywhere

(first published in Poetry Super Highway, May 2023)

As the cam rotates,

blood thundering your

cranium in its vice,

do not forget to breathe–

even as your orbital bones

fracture and pierce the

globes of your eyes, your

hand gripping the seam of your skull

in the garland of osmium that

jails your torn temples (until

killing would be kindness).

Light and movement are

merciless here, and there is

nothing to be done but breathe.

Observe your scalenes

pulled from their tubercles,

queasiness rising in

rivulets of bile;

hushed salts hop your eyes,

teeming downwards, pooled

under your chin. Your thoracic

vertebrae avalanche and

weight your Botticelli body to bed,

xanthous hair splayed like a pin-up;

your form a pendulum, its amplitude a

zero-sum game.

(first published by The Wild Umbrella, January 2026)

SJF (she/her) seeks rarified darkness.

Me: partial to cool air, eye shades, and CGRP blockers.

You: redemptive and breezy, with a penchant for sleeping in.

Let’s drink coffee in bed, hit the town after dusk, and use inside voices.

Serious only need respond. No cologne.

(first published by Star 82 review, May 2026, Issue 14.1)

submerged and unseen

            in an archaic well –

                        women thought dirty

                                    by men of G0d

in an archaic well,

            with bodies purified

                        by men of G0d,

                                    ensnaring the fecund

with bodies purified,

            my sisters were bait

                        ensnaring the fecund

                                    in their water ringed curls

my sisters were bait,

            fertile and sullen –

                        in their water ringed curls

                                    hid the birth of the world

fertile and sullen,

            women thought dirty

                        hid the birth of the world –

                                    submerged and unseen

(first published by Burningword Literary Journal, August 2022)

I borrowed your pain and

the pills they sent

to subdue the orbit of

impotence

until gravity softened,

releasing the mass

of our bodies

untethered.

When your atoms dispersed

my reflection fled,

the refraction of light

caught in a chasm,

a stylus trapped in a

hollowed groove

the turntable purling,

purposeless.

Now I sing to fill the

negative space,

to find myself

in the absence of form,

my farraginous face

a Rubin’s vase,

matter

seeking countenance.

My nucleonic notes

collide,

composed of

incandescent hydrogen,

my hot core the

cadence of fusion,

rising in coruscant

crescendo.

I am Helios

driving my chariot

to horizon’s edge,

my flaming horses

unbridled,

not knowing myself

until across the vast abyss

Aristarchus named me sun.

(first published by Cathexis Northwest Press, April 2022)

i.

my father and i engage in lively debate about the proletariat the abyss of a living wage as if we had a vested interest in the outcome dancing like dust up a vacant shelf instead of lying down politely as the dead do a year gone dad says he is not yet bound by such codes of decorum

ii.

incredulous we watch paraders waving from gaudy floats dramatic dioramas distracting death preening for the cameras efforting to disguise their numbered days i mean compared to the big picture the number is low

iii.

the living just don’t get how small their role is in this broadcast utter hubris dad mutters under his breath he says that this unbridled display really pisses death off

iv.

to the living i say instead of endless parades stage a protest chant chained to railings and bedframes redirect time’s attention if he looks your way say hey! only us dead here protesting! the living culprits are there in plain sight tramping in rowdy rows deliver the lot of them like pizza boxes stacked at death’s door

v.

meanwhile dad and i have forgotten our own demises as we tune out the unintelligible hum below much more interested in debating the order of days in civilized society than listening to the droning dross of harpstrung prayers

vi.

dad laments this is difficult to bring up but the thing is kiddo you’re not dead yet as well as you play it and though i’d love you to stay you’re here past curfew i want to hold dad’s voice in my ear

vii.

my body back in bed i roll to face the wall resist the ruse of lucid dreaming that we can choose to wake as if that has ever really been an option look you can’t just change the channel at will

viii.

so what next?

ix.

be a good girl and hope for the best do the dishes save the children from the mess you’ve made trying to maintain form forget dad’s face just remember that when the parade halts death will claim the first prize ribbon

There will come a night our eyes don’t close—a morning they will not open. So it is that we depart. It is never too soon to pack that which you will need for the journey. You may find it useful to make a list, so as not to overlook essentials. Prone to misplacing things, my secrets are scrawled on the inside of my left forearm in fine point purple sharpie— I hope that this will prove helpful as you consider your priorities...

     ~morning beans in the grinder

     ~pictures my mother saved

     ~the transcript of my first love

     ~all the black piano keys

     ~sonograms of my children

     ~a Pez dispenser

     ~an SSRI and an anxiolytic

     ~fairy lights

     ~Margaret Atwood's 'Wilderness Tips'   

     ~incense sticks

     ~apologies I neither gave nor got

     ~a magic 8 ball

     ~season three of Friends

     ~the memory of my chosen family

     ~Blue on vinyl

     ~my parents' forwarding address

     ~the shadows I cast on the sidewalk

I stopped there when I ran out of room on my arm. Your list can be as long or short as you like—but best not to prevaricate, as travel plans can change on a dime. Stack your secrets in a steamer, triple twine the trunk, and tie tightly. Now you are done! You may wonder what you will you find when the time comes to sever the knots. This I cannot tell, my friend—a packing list is faith. 

(first published by Poetry Breakfast, August 2024)

And it’s another story

   a house a dog a day 

there was shopping 

  coffee and cooking

the synchronized intimacy 

  of chopping and clearing 

washing and what to watch 

  before hours tangled with 

breath rising breath falling 

  filling the room filtering 

through raised windows

while the refrigerator purrs

   paws stretched on the quilt

over bodies that have slept 

for hundreds of nights after 

thousands of meals and 

  myriad moments in the 

syncopation of toothbrushes 

dreams lucid or lost until light

rises yet again as a new world

  invites them into another 

turn of day to night and 

      somewhere in a 

crystalled corner of 

  the room time chokes 

and I blink and am gone

(first published by Epistemic Literary, November 2024)

    and how

       will you feel

knees on the ground

eye level to the void where

you must clamp coerce cut compress coax 

     the fat resin of each phrase

holding its howl    

swallowing its once

voluptuous breath 

words braided into 

tight-plait wire straining

     against cylindric steel 

whose

friction-singed sides

blister syntax

     scathed flesh of sentences

forming slim scars

as you blow ash

across the page

exhaling into what remains

when you are 

     done courting fire

your pyrolytic words

transmuted 

forge themselves

(first published by January House Literary Journal, Spring/Summer 2025)

I opened my eyes
an offering of release 
hands cupped, face lifted
not waiting but 
poised to move 

while still.

The wind caught 
my hem, and 
lifting my steps 
wound me into this
annulus between known 

and unlocked.

Here it is like
looking through water,
now magnified, 
now murky
pulled by a gravity 

shifting without law.

The helical current
turns like a key
and I follow, 
my form lax and my
eyes fixed on the door 

as it opens.

(first published by Lone Mountain Literary Society, September 2022)

My lover and I are discussing corruption

over coffee. Alexei Navalny’s widow

stepping into her husband’s YouTube shoes

outside of Russia, surely a new price

on her head, now that prison has collected

Putin’s bounty. We contemplate the fear

of our brief centuries collapsing in

on themselves, watching slow

motion reels of this ephemeral empire

hovering over a civil divide and wondering

what would actually be lost, what is even

left after all we’ve ground under our

imported heels, tariffs be damned–

I remember what it felt like to be

sixteen at a rally in Central Park

with no reason not to believe change

was gonna come. We were there to

leave the whole scene better than we

found it and I find myself relieved for the

first time, I tell my lover, that my own kids

are too cynical to procreate.

Still there is language / clattering of tongues / plaiting baskets to hold days / 

sort nights / porous vessels / for everything most important.

At night I cut and tuck my words / start-and-stop weave / sliding them into the hollow core /

to ensure nothing is lost / nothing is taken / when I close my eyes.

My fingers nick notches / scratching the sides / strands catch in my nails /
I cannot bear to feel fissures / so I pray.

Orisons wrap around / everything the moon's shadow dims / where the sheen of faith

is all I have/ to find rest.

This morning I felt / where I had lain / cupped my words / stained and aged in my hands /

afraid to find what the moon stole / when my lids were sealed.

When I speak / I start anew / in the weave brake I sift silence /

fertile in the light / I teach myself / to create more.

(first published by Wild Roof Journal, January 2023)

I wished for you / until I wished you away / layering bits of ribbon / feathers / and words like nacre spinning sand / I sealed you in scalloped edging /  sank you with the sea / and slept.

When your shell fractured / I awoke in Neptune's palm / his trident luring my siren's song / euphonious / riding a thoracic wind / to your mollusked ear.

I drew you with my breath / or maybe the sea delivered us / waves racing with palace horses /or we were carried by laughing gulls / away from Neptune / and my own resolve.

Did we plummet from red beaks? / Sink in salt marshes? / I summon memory / see us in our shattered casings / enrapt and doomed / with brined breath rising / evanescent.

(first published by Wildroof Journal, March 2024)

I can now get discounted pancakes

my son Gabe informs me over breakfast, stifling his laughter.

I am not amused. A senior discount

when I am not even 60. This kind of abomination

is why I avoid chain restaurants. I refuse

the discount and make Gabe pay

for breakfast. Senior pancakes become a running joke

between us. My future IHOP years

become a container

for our symbiotic fears—

His, that I will die and loose the monsters that steal his sleep.

Mine, that I will die and leave him undefended.

2am text: Mom, please don’t die.

Me: Not planning to kid - and miss all the free pancakes?

His admonition when I leave the house

to “be safe in and around cars” becomes a family

valediction. I start a document

on my computer called, “Mom

Manual,” a repository for whatever wisdom I can muster.

The phone number for the plumber.

Which bills are on autopay. What to do

when the pharmacy demands pre-authorization.

How to find sliding-scale

therapy. Box breathing. Meanwhile,

I hold my breath in cars, planes, echocardiograms

blood tests. I remind the universe

that I need to be here long

enough for him to be okay.

I pray to everyone and no one in particular,

to myself and whoever else might be listening.

Midnight: Mom, I had a bad dream, please confirm you’re still alive.

Me: damn straight, I don’t plan to miss my IHOP years.

(first published by SEXTET, December 2025)

today saw its shadow

   between gullies of violet blooms

and somnolent murk,

   gloom lollygagging six more

goddam weeks—

   so i tuck in the curtains,

smooth flannel sheets, button my eyes

   and unfurl my stoic corpse

as nights overstay their welcome,

   spitting dreams into worn bandanas

tied to sticks and shoulder hoisted

   by hobos in boxcars heading

G0d knows where,

   whistling the map of tracks

with the wheel squeal of

   freedom compelling them on

as they hug the rail bends—

   too late for me to follow,

i drag my slippered feet to pace the

   permanent way, and retreat to my casket

kicking the damp sheets down,

   the sweating sides too close to catch

my vapored breath as it

   crests the yawning lid—

time twitches ticking hands,

   thrumming walls with hours no

white noise can obscure,

   as the skylights spread like wings

where my feathered shadow has fled

(first published by Third Wednesday Magazine, September 2024)

I birthed you

            precious, perfect,

                        in suspended time,

                                    held high above the

                                                vulnerable earth

                                                            we two.

                                                            But gravity crooned

                                                her siren song

                                    and we drew near to listen,

                        her dangerous lullaby

            cradling us close

to the surface

until I could no longer deny the weight of our bodies.

The hovering air hung

            so thick my skull cracked –

                        but still I nursed your

                                    mewling heart, your

                                                pink bud mouth,

                                                            as bilious glass

                                                            (leaded, unyielding)

                                                 caged my head,

                                    and through its impenetrable wall

                        I adored you,

            while straining to see

through its beveled surface

                                    your beautiful translucent face.

(first published by Tree House Literary Issue #1, Winter 2022)

your hospitalization i’m folding your laundry, you apologize by the stove

judging your own steel edge, cursing all you cannot control, too much

bile, too little dopamine, fingers locked over your eyes like bars I cannot

loose nor reach beyond; later you will rock, hugging the tiles in the late

hours while i dread morning, and each next day so

i roll and tuck your socks, square your sheets, your knee torn jeans i

take on wilds you cannot tame, compact and stack them, patti smith

and joan jett the pretty reckless hendrix prince folded and framed by

boxers and bras and i carry the laundry

the length of the hall, set the basket hushed at your door, on the other

side your sprawling form, limbs that tangled with mine when you drifted

off in onesie stripes, hands tugging my loose curl, milk breath pausing

and purring in sleep i meet the floor

and lock eyes with the doorknob, the threshold a caesura, after which i

will hear you as a hallway voice by the nurses’ station, treaded socks

pacing the phone, a cup of meds, a locked steel door and not enough

words to penetrate the distance

(first published by The Wild Umbrella, January 2026)

“An injury caused by an extrinsic agent or

behavioral state resulting from

considerable mental disruption and

duress; acute physical suffering or

emotional upset inflicted by a mechanism or

force that causes trauma.” I’ve spent years

grappling with the trauma that tanked my kids’ mental

health, and the diagnoses that have dogged them.

Intimate abuses are potent, and they suffered the double

jeopardy of their father’s gaslighting ire and uncle’s

kaleidoscopic offenses. Claims of familial

love conflated with cruelty create a funhouse

mirror wherein truth is distorted, its reflection unstable.

Nietzsche wrote, “the constitution of existence might be such that

one would be destroyed by a complete knowledge of it.”

Perhaps this is why the truth of trauma is so elusive. It is dangerous.

Quixotic armchair analysts tout treatments to

repair the damage wrought by trauma, but there is no ready

salvation to be found—recovery is a lifetime’s work.

Therapeutic tools are just that, the wrench wielded

under the hood when the engine kicks. The shop

vac when everything falls to the floor and you don’t know

where the mess ends and you begin.

Xanax to take the edge off the rising panic.

You can only understand the work through metaphor.

Zayde told the kids to “get well soon.”

I came into your joy

and fell upon the lap of grace,

a whirling dervish in

a dance of revelation,

the three of us twirling

entwined and free and

wrapped in the sheen

of promise.

We were upswept in

ecstatic devotion,

turning in time together -

meeting the mystic

with eyes - minds

open and sinewed,

embracing earth and above,

the music of the spheres.

But then we looked down,

lost under our feet -

struggling to balance as

flutes and hymns dimmed;

dizzy and pallid we

dropped on our cloaks,

far from the sama

and further from home.

How many times did we

dance, ascend, and fall?

I cannot count;

and still we spun

courting the divine,

hands met in prayer

for all we would hold

if we had looked up.

(first published by American Writers Review/San Fedele Press, July 2022)

i unbound 

my eyes for you

through the shadows and 

the light refracted 

in the well of 

yours

immersed and still

i drink and 

ascend

breathe 

and draw under again

again

you swallow my

gaze, open and 

wet as you hold me

silent under the water, 

my pores rich with

breath

there is no

struggle

only suspension, 

only the fossilized 

amber of our 

metronomic pulse

and your eyes 

fluid prisms

reflecting worlds

rising like Atlantis 

their gates opening 

to receive me

 (first published by Beyond Words International Literary Magazine, January 2022)

this is everything

our forms shadow

the shattered whole

nothing more

than this piece

born before the

world is ours

we sift shards

tongue and groove

to marry the one

we have carried unbroken

fragments exhaling the

names we took when

we fell from the skies

we blend the seams

with holy sparks

cast without sight

this is how new worlds are built

paths forged with tikvah

that we will not be alone

on the long walk home

(first published by Wildroof Journal, March 2024)

the sun is lying about her

  effortless revolutions

around the earth?

What if she can’t set

  without a milligram of

Klonopin and an audiobook

  of short stories on repeat?

What if she startles at moonrise,

  oppressed by the lanky hours

until her renewed debut?

Maybe she scares herself

  pondering the point of lifting

just to descend and descend

  in an endless cycle of contrition—

sorry for the glare for the

  melanoma for the migraines

for the dehydration

  and unbearable surface heat.

And then the sinking, always

sinking. What if she doesn’t

actually want to come back?

Perhaps there is only so long

  she can cycle before the futility

of her constancy mocks her.

What if the hours she sleeps

  are the only reason she still

holds hydrogen in her core—

  yet sleep eludes her?

And what if the act of rising

  requires a suspension of

disbelief she cannot sustain?—

(first published by Wildroof Journal, January, 2026)

a ghost on the mattress

fuzz in the lint trap

the wind between words

a watch

birthday cards in a file

a Covid booster

ice melting in a Starbuck's cup

a closet full of hangers

your mother's eyes in my face

a cracked iPhone

the ache of all travelers

whose home is fleeting

a peck at bedtime

an uneaten knish

a solitary drumstick

and a trove of stories

I cannot tell.

(first published by Beyond Words International Literary Magazine, Summer 2022)

Some small grace –
the white bows
tethered to my
new hair, basin
on the table by
the window
washcloth in hand –
you left these for me
saved for the day
my hand went up
empty.

When you spun
the carousel
each ring we rounded
was a letting go –
a hand held
a hand unfurled
a hand waving –

I toddle the play yard

run the familiar streets
take the wheel

I am gone.

You box the bows
play the reel where

I go round and round –
you cup patient 
tears in your palm
and save those too –

we learn that time ends
we worry the thread

careful not to unravel

the taught spool

held tenderly between.

You are waving now from

a far way off, feet furrowed

in grass I hear my name

as it answers the distance –

you saved this grace for me –

these tiny bows, this cloth,
a window watching the yard

where you sing my name,

my outstretched hand

always met by yours.

(first published by Mill Valley Literary Review, Winter 2022)

Yeah, so when I got Covid it was a big thing, before vaccines and all that, just pure terror like you were playing Russian roulette and the first five chambers were empty. And no one knew a lot of chaff hitched a ride on the virus’ back; big, bad wolfy waste like why can't I remember and panic disorder and ground-glass nodules. I had a husband (I don’t have a husband now) and he pretty much thought I went crazy (and turns out he was really not up for that).

I was singing a concert in New York when I got Covid. Can we talk about irony? Every breath I lured to my lungs like wind driven waves carried corona. SARS surfing the stream, coasting the long ride, wiping out in my windpipe. Breathing became athing. That pretty much splintered singing, notes burrowed in the Persian rug under the piano, camouflaged as shards of light. I swallowed songs in my sleep. I swallowed fear with gulps of fetid air.

But fear kept upping like bile, staining the corner of my glass-walled ER room, damping the mile I couldn't walk, fueling the car I wanted to drive off the road. The one who is not my husband called our marriage a Covid casualty, like he had no agency in its flatlining. He couldn't hear help, because it was not about him. But I get it now. We all boast of better, but no one really ever knows what worse looks like. No one wants to know that. Covid was like that. Like out of time.

Time proved Covid the putrescent precursor to my storm, not the squall itself (I was lucky, droves were dragged under that greedy tsunami). But Covid thickened my skin like the walls of my lungs, front loaded my loss, pushed me through the eyewall to the eye, where I could watch in stillness as raging swells disappeared my life. In time the spectacle shot me to shore, sand in my throat and ankles leashed in kelp. And still I walked. And still I breathe.

(first published by Cathexis Northwest Press, September 2023)

Zebra leggings, red boots,
motorcycle jacket,
a burst of laughter -
your eyes rush to me
like kids bounding out the door
on the last day of school, 
a force, and a balm.
This is how I found you,
Zheng, on the steps 
that first time.
In my memory the sun
is holding you
(though that summer swam
in fog), and you dance 
towards me (but how, down
those narrow steps?).
We talk in dreams and worlds
as if we had bumped into one
another after a long absence,
or had just saluted the sun
and poured tea that morning
in our slippers;
your words are adventures 
waiting in the wings,
operas and weddings and
children... your words paint 
circles within circles
and I am right 
in the middle with you.
I will learn that 
everyone you touch
feels that they sit
in the center of your
world - and for each 
of us, it will be true.
There are no constraints
to the room you
have made in your heart.
My inimitable friend,
I will miss seeing life
through the window of

your eyes,
the fog peeling itself
from the sidewalk
as we sit on the steps.
And I will know
when I feel the sun
warming my hair
that you are the rays
that touch me still.

(First published in The Pointed Circle, Winter 2022)