Making the Most of It - Boston Literary Magazine Winter 2007
The Cousin - Right Hand Pointing - Issue 16 / 2007
The Cousin (audio) Whale Sound
Animal Instinct - Right Hand Pointing - Issue 16 / 2007
We Missed - Autumn Sky Poetry - 2007 / Issue 7
The Accountant - Right Hand Pointing - Issue 40 / Harsh Mathematics - April 2011
House Arrest - Rose and Thorn Journal - Spring 2011
Sis - Montucky Review - 2012
Sport Utility Poem
Let me shove this in your face
Guzzle up words in excess
Burn high octane adjectives
Belch superlatives your way
My verbs are bigger than yours
Because that is how I want them
Need has nothing to do with it
I could compact or subcompact
But why, when I can take my poem
Where I want- through the fucking mud
Off the page and around couplets and haikus
Into places your creampuff iambic pentameter can’t go
And I’ll leave you in my oxymoronic dust
Passing everything on the road
Except a dictionary- cause a guy’s gotta refuel
And I don’t mind that- economy is not my thing
There’s an endless supply of words
So I charge ahead with my bumper
Raised high as my ego- flipping off orthodoxy
* First appeared in Rockhurst Annual Fine Arts Review.
Give Me Some Everyday Religion
“Dearest dealer,
I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.” – Anne Sexton
So esoteric, you
Accommodate me at times,
Without foundation
That I should roll snake-eyes
Or pick a winning number
With no grounds and not a “thank you”
For my part to be the blest bastard. But then
To be trumped by every stoplight
Or fathom a turn of hard-luck so
Lethal, I squirm in the puddles of
Self pity and moan of the great
Injustice of this world like I understand
It all so well. Ha!
Deal me in … I say.
Let me play with the big boys.
Let me smoke my luck and drink my advantage
Like my supply of chips at the bank is unending.
Are you looking over my shoulder god?
* First appeared in Park University Scribe
Foxtrot
The miles between us are narrow ruled
I can't count the times we've tripped
over those same one syllable words
you the progressive one
me the traditionalist
trying to attain proximity
without over indulgence
without red flags
without precociousness
we dance around well enough
without the steps we most admire
to close for comfort
to distant to satisfy
* First appeared in WestWard Quarterly -- Fall 2011
