Decorating a Christmas tree, 
Lights cast taught.
Seeing beads of light – asymmetrical, imperfect.

Grease in my hair and oil on my face, 
Piercing uncleanliness.
But sharper is the ground leading from bed to shower.

Over and over and spinning and spinning
The beiges are dancing in the machine
I sit on the dryer and wait so patiently
for the load to be done and restarted again.

at the end of the Earth
there is a dandelion plant
the corner of the sky rests on its bosom
our world relies on its strength

in girl scouts, they teach you sayings
ones you sing around the campfire
they’re supposed to teach lessons
“make new friends but keep the old
one is silver and the other is gold”
except no one remembers the silver
the second-place trophy
the insignificant

In the evenings, 
  Following sundown
     I observed you
        However,
            I never saw you

Your twinkle of light
  Alone –
     In the dead of night
    Impunity
     In absence from society

New

We wake up and feel the absence of warmth.

*** 
Waxing Crescent

Slowly now, we embrace
the blossoming light all around.
Was sleep an absence
from the world, or an immersion
in it? Eyes open, the lights
offer us their hands.

Salty wind pushes at the falling tide.
Blue serenity veils the town as a 
melancholy buzz flows through the idle docks.

A boat pushes through the harbor:
It drifts along, 
lazily down.

the purple lights start to fade, the crowd dying with them.
     your eyes once hidden in the crowd glow vermilion,
     failing to camouflage themselves beneath the shadows
     of your white pupil, an outcast among the filthy onyx pupils

Every day,
I walk a walk
I walk in the hot,
And in the cold,
I walk on grass,
And on the road
I walk under trees,
And under buildings.

I vividly remember
the rough feel of my closet’s carpeting beneath my fingers
as they traced lines and circles and stars
like the ones that filled the sky that night.

In a rare process called transdifferentiation, the turritopsis dohrnii 
(known as the immortal jellyfish) can, in response to physical danger, 
leap back to its first stage of life as a polyp. The born-again polyp 

I am a werewolf.
Waves of pain
Bitter transformation
I bite back
When nothing is wrong
Queasy ramblings
Crying in the bathroom
Clutching onto my stomach
I pray for forgiveness
Fur on my body
Shaved and prickly
Pushing down my nature

come to you in
cyclical relapse
with each syllable
escaping

muzzling silence
be tempted to borrow
its imprisonment and speak in
dialogues conversed by

friction of skins.

Suburban style van, with its stained coffee cup and sheaned sheets. The ceiling that sags and the mail tucked into the windshield, with the dent on the right of the bumper. The keys in the ignition, the fire has started. Will you drive?

The fountain reflects light
onto the face of the library downtown.
We went there once, a long time ago.
It still glows.

like the exuberance of bangs cut too short and stacks of bracelets that never match. 
gold is for the good days only. 
most days are silver. they are plentiful and lacking variation. 
endless hours and constantly runny eyes. 

The world is large, but so am I.
An ocean of confused compassion
rolls through my veins,
and I balance boulders 
on unmanicured fingertips. 

What will you let yourself know?
And what will you put in boxes
And crush
Hoping it won’t spring up again

My attic is full of chests that I’ve battered in
Locked and guarded
That I’ve known I couldn’t see
Without ever looking inside

yesterday, 
i was greeted by the moon herself in your driveway.
she left my palms damp with slobber in her wake
and i stood outside your front door,
feeling like a fraction, small but rightfully so
and across the street, adult chatter and laughter

This morning I listened to an interview 
with poet Ada Limón. She spoke about 
epiphanies and didactic endings
and how sometimes a poet must surrender 
to the discomfort of unknowing.
How sometimes it is best to listen 
to the world’s echoing heartbeat 

i’m floating on my back with 
sunscreen spread along my nose and 
water lapping against my shoulders. 
i should be focusing on
how the sun is warming me from the outside — in or
how my friends are splashing water over our goosebumped flesh but 

I wish I had trauma that I could spin into a story, 
a story that would grip your thoughts tighter than leather binding, 
Something I could rip to shreds, over-analyze in the margins, 
sew back together, and send off to the publisher before I tear myself apart.

The sun went missing today.
There were no rivers of blood or plagues of locusts,
first-born children did not fall ill, nor did frogs descend on the cities.
It was quiet. 
The black hole stood stagnant.
We could only watch and wait.

I am melting butter
in AP Statistics
draped over the desk
warm dripping out of leaky sleeves
as I slide puddley down the hallway my mother screams,
 “Finally, some fat inside you!”
someone needs to pour out my sneakers
wash me out of my socks

As I pass through an unmarked apartment building,
I observe a woman’s relationship with a stray cat.

Obscured by the shadows of happy hour light,
the dirt that has accumulated on the floor’s grout still shines, 

The Sun is a greedy emperor, 
Shining its light across the Canyon, 
And evaporating drops of water. 
 
With the land so parched and no color than red, 
The beings must have knelt by now, right? 
No, there are a few that stand. 
 

Mmm, you are a distracted assent, you coat like cold sweat,
glisten
like contented sleep.

And then you are songless– muh like mundane, buzzing of the lampshade fibers,
quivering
from the lamplight flicker.

The credits recover,
and suddenly like a k9 you snuffle the criminal boyhood out of my skin.
I always think myself circumspect in my cover-ups, but in seconds you know where my blindspot is.

PART I: AI is created
I think God made you and me out of binary code You call me an enigma,
But I do not speak your language. You would be the 1’s.
Standing tall
Always at the top
Perfect Aryan halo on your head I would be the 0’s.
Zero.

Ocean wanders in to contemplate me

drafts a verse about my ankles in

twisting foam, scrambles the lines

and forgets. A mirror in the slick

afterthought of water on sand

where my feet sink in soft parchment

clouds, beneath shells and kelp