The print version of the Midsommar anthology I’m in is out now and only $6 on Amazon! Huge thanks to The Daily Drunk and Kristin Garth for picking up my poem. 🤘

The print version of the Midsommar anthology I’m in is out now and only $6 on Amazon! Huge thanks to The Daily Drunk and Kristin Garth for picking up my poem. 🤘
Aaahhhh!!! The Midsommar anthology is live! Free ebook! Print version coming soon! I’m in this! WOO!!! I’m so freaking excited about this!!! Huge thanks to Kristin Garth for including my poem and putting this all together, The Daily Drunk for making this a thing and being such a gift to the community, and a/perture cinema for being one of the coolest movie theaters ever. 😊 Read the full free ebook here!!!
Yesterday, I wrote a poem about the Eraserhead baby. Today, it’s live in The Daily Drunk. To anyone reading this: I’m sorry and you’re welcome.
Take things day by day is something they tell you when you’re visibly heading toward a future without days. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just weird that now that I actually want to be here, the entire world is crashing down around me. I go in the backyard, take a few laps, try to clear the sour taste from my mouth. When I inhale, there are notes I never sensed before, little hints of neighborhood post-crisis, and the birds are singing at night now. I’m putting down words, drinking down tea, lining up my queue and working through. I’m taking things as they come, another favorite from back in my therapy days. Scenes play out in my mind’s projector, flickering at twenty-four, showing what I’ll look like at forty-eight, then ninety-six, shuttling through the seams of life till I am the last person out in the world, streets empty, grass clear and tall, and all of the things that used to matter so much are no longer a concern, I’m just carrying on, ever-forward, designing and desiring times like these, as chaotic as they might be, even so, letting them be and become what they will. Counting each day down and watching in eon-time, using the distinctly human gift of forward-thinking. See the sprouts grow, reach their predetermined top, come back down once again, as the human rockets buzz and hum around, appearing and disappearing as the sun yo-yos up ahead, first up then down then up again, stars shifting, spinning the sky in time, and I am here again, all at once, locked in a painfully slow retelling of a life I’ve already lived and seen. These are the things that make up a life, reduced to their core functions, and here are all the rooms you’ve entered, the ones you can never enter again. Here are the people you have seen, none of which you can see right now, some of which you might never see again. Here is the great abiding grief that accompanies the ones who’ve already left you, the ones yet to leave. Here are all of the things you can feel, dry now, because you are sober and will stay that way no matter what, these things you’re allowing yourself, maybe forcing yourself, to feel. Here are all the things that make up your altered, segmented life, the segmented lives of everyone right now. Because there is no going back, and you’ve seen that for some time now, since this whole thing began, but quarantine wasn’t the beginning of the change. It was already shifting, imperceptibly, by degrees so small that you could scarcely notice. You are really alive here, even now. There it is. You’re even breathing, taking down that water, letting light refract and strike the wall behind you, picture-smooth, rippled grooves like vinyl as you wake and wait for the day to stop hitting. And here it is, as it is, right now in this perfect, terrible moment. In this snapshot that is all there is but not all there ever will be, and that’s okay.
fear is a currency
to be used
for good or ill
whatever you choose
the unknown and unknowing
of a person
walking down the street
with knowledge and abilities
keeping watch
waiting
for the time to be right
knowing
that one can become more
than just a person
knowing
that if you’re going to see change
you’re going
to have to make it yourself
feeling
resolve mixed in
with the nerves
seeing
everything in
a different way
a different lens
taking a step beyond
into a place where you can’t turn back
can only
become something greater
than yourself
more
than flesh and blood
more
than fear and mistakes
can become
a symbol
of
something
greater.
Pique
like a kid sitting on the floor
at the Scholastic Fair
debating stealing a book
because he can’t afford it
eats public assistance at lunch
can already see the looks of shame
on the faces
of his parents
when they walk into the principal’s office
so he doesn’t
so he puts it back
and tries to picture imagined worlds
his mind won’t be shown.
Peek
like hearing “don’t peek”
from the lips
of his first girlfriend
removing her bra straps
audibly
and the space between them is filled
with electricity
and when they touch
it’s a revelation
and when they finish
he tells her stories
disguised fictions
makes them up on the spot
like he did
as a kid
when the only time you heard
“don’t peek”
was during a game
of hide and seek
Peak
like seeing your name
on the cover
of a book
and you don’t know
how it got there
even though you do
don’t know
the steps that got you
from point A to B
and if you try real hard
you can almost see
the kid that would go hungry
can almost see
the kid with ripped-up
hand-me-down
jeans
and eyes that wanted
but couldn’t always
see
and now you’re at the top
of a tall
tall peak
breathing in the thin air
and seeing all
you can see
this is my ex
//
perience
where the heat doesn’t go down
inside
in a town
where you can take a barbed-wire bat
to the leg
mistaken for a King
or a GD
when you’re just a kid
where you can
walk past grown men fighting
as a child
walking to a friend’s house
at a time when you could see
where everyone was
by the number of bikes left strewn
on the front lawn
this is my ex
//
perience