i

Dawn: 

Fog of inebriation billows across the dancefloor of the 
mating ducklings. 
Feathered reason, moulting in hormonal surges— 
downy exhilaration! 
Crashing wings plunging 
beneath a steamy surface
pecking at worthiness 
before they must rise again to 
uninterested shadows of a 
dispersing pond.

ii

First Date:

Pry me as a bolted lock. Ask the questions though 
I were a summer’s sky, cloudless, 
free of doubt. 
Be the knight. 
Be the stranger. 
Be the seed that yearns 
to bloom within my arid throat. 

Pry me and
bloat in the bountiful lies. 

iii

Summer:

In the apricot haze of each new morning, 
our bodies blister the hanging mist of the flowering park. 
Each breath carries ash of malted liquor. 
Skins stained under the friction of 
freshly laid sod. On this bench together, 
our dreams are humid as the sun 
thrusts above the moaning river. 

iv

Apartment (Cohabitation):

The wash of the passion fruits 
burns the air here, 
sears through each molecule
one by one by one
no surface remains untainted. 
No space, no oxygen celibate 
enough to use, to breathe. 

We grip, 
we mount,
 we cry 
for release.

We hate the furniture.  

v

Jaw:

It begins…one clench around the fork,
his jaw tripping over itself. At first, 
a solitary click—a hiccup over crusted conversation. 
 
Then a crack exploding, clobbering stunted platitudes.
Ricocheting my eardrums, eroding my spine. 
 
Knuckles pale over table glass.
The meal is sour, spoiled like contaminated love. 


vi

Winter:

Winter is a tragedy. Penance for the sins of summer. 
A prison of incarcerated waters locking lives within. 
Every flake of snow, a warden 
whom you plead with in growing desperation 
for early spring parole. 
Malignant shards penetrating every pore 
leave you cracking, bloody. 
Never trust anyone who says they love winter.
vii

Commitment Issues: 

There are moths in my head. A motel 
of piling bodies in my stomach. My lungs, 
a prairie of obelisks gifted from every boy 
next door. And did you know 

I once lost your father among my 
scattered jeans and sprained my eyes to see 
the angels weep over your dehydrated pride?  

All because behind my teeth, 
the raven caws.  

viii

Ugly Swan at Midnight:

I can’t recollect now when I first 
came here to bury my remaining hours
deep below this sterile water.

Under the rise of the unfaithful moon,
that much I can recall. 
I remember sorrow. 
I remember happiness. 

I remember nothing
now that it is over. 

ix

Re-Dawn: 

Floating once more, deep within the 
mist of inebriation entangled among the quickening stream
of mating ducklings.
Downy exhilaration, moulting, 
plunging beneath the surface, 
that grows progressively tepid.
In the crimson light, worthiness 
increasingly elusive. 
Flustered before the flock
of an evaporating pond.