beyond every

other

dream, desire, and

youthful dalliance lies

disillusionment —

yearning for

something

more,

only to find

resistance, denial, and revulsion—

painfully perplexed—

how can

I

appear this way?

Just because we are human, we are prisoners of the years. Yet that very prison is the room of discipline in which we, driven by the urgency of time, create.   
                                                                                                                 — from Jewish liturgy

Today
the hungover man
awoke, still broke,
to see that poetry
read in a brewery
was not a recipe
for prosperity.
So the hungover man
took a stand,
writing out of love
for writing in his land.

A woman boards the train with eighty stolen Jacksons stitched in bra cups.

Rusalkas are water spirits in slavic folklore, often portrayed as demons or the the vengeful ghosts of women killed by their lovers, however it is possible that once they were considered gods.

men have called me
    beautiful echoes
gold rose indigo
    this vital flesh
sky’s shadow
    mirror skin
vapor softening
    my soft body
many long nights
    beside this river
a cast down
    feather-soft glance
watching fine mist
    silver river halo
form from itself
    forming itself

perhaps my heart
    stirred in the torrent
rose

        carried somewhere
            during thunderstorms
        rain sinks through me
            reemerges where my form
        becomes the river lost
            hearts for the current

        below the water
            vast rippling disk
        the sky’s dark belly
            concealing iterations

if it’s true that once I was a soul
    I think it is like drinking

In all your Pinterest boards,

Where does kindness come from?
These five friends have enjoyed each other’s company for the last several days,
one always having the suggestions,
one always with something to say,
one always willing to try something,
one always curious,
and one always quiet.
Whether it was the flan shared as if made by her own two hands
or the constant invitation 
that every word represented,
this table embodied the world I always imagined
as a young, young child.
The end of the last millennium prepared all of us for a future
of gleaming cities carved
from the resin of paradise;
abundance sheltered behind spaces we had not yet imagined,
and people who were beautiful because they were happy
gathered in a world as wild as antiquity
just outside every transtechnological window.
Yet as I grow older in this place refilled with disappointments,
I no longer hope for sleek bannisters of glass and rhodium
or for floating vehicles and dwellings.
I hope instead to see 
my colleague feeding the unhoused
as if the meal she shared was made by her own two hands.
If I saw such an experience every day or even every week,
I would know that the rest of that future
would be here soon enough.

There are times I want to say things, a 
turn of phrase, a
joke, a
metaphor for the way my brain knows
—knew—
the waves of your brain.

We, oscillations of mirth and beseeching, “please 
don’t ever leave me, not one other
else knows the banter.”

I go through my phone to find one 
other else who would get it and

I know who would try
—I thought, I think— but I 
know I will hold their scatter of responses to my ear and
hope to hear the

ocean.

When words are few 
Frustrations are many 
For a wannabe boss who knows little 
About the real world of actual life 
All I can do is get through the day 
Grit my teeth, bear it
In a another meeting
Listening to more bullshit
That could have been summed up
In a short and sweet email
Humble enough to I’m replaceable 
Confident enough to know that 
After all my years of experience 
It would take three to replace me 
I stay out of convenient, convenience
Nothing more, nothing less.

cicadas 
calling out through 
the ghost smoke 
of a wildfire over 
one thousand miles away 

they’ve never been a problem
a rhythm that reminds me 
that no matter what we think

all things continue 
as they have before 
and will do after