Sample Poems

My poetry explores a range of topics including queer sexuality, the lasting impacts of global pandemics and parallels between the aging human body and global climate crisis.

(photo credits for this page - K. Max Mellenthin)

FONT, from The Unbuttoned Eye

I like your blonde curls in bar light. The silver

foil peels from a beer. There’s a little ocean

in your green eyes, a lot of sad. You talk about the drive

down from Skowhegan, pulling over twice so he

could heave. A long day of waiting at Maine Medical,

beloved backbones a constant reminder the body once

had weight. I take you to my room, the Motel 6 in Portland.

You whisper how he’s lost the strength to walk, so for weeks

you’ve carried him like a child learning a waltz. You tell me how,

lifted from the bed, he places lesioned soles on top of your feet,

how you walk backward toward the bathroom, how in all

those weeks you haven’t cried. You roll white socks,

slip them into Reeboks. After apologetic sex, I tell you,

Get up. Towering, I tell you, Put your feet on mine. Arms

wrapping shoulders, cheek against chest, I walk us

to the motel window, listen to your jag of breath,

whimper of weeping for a man I’ll never meet. I memorize

the font of a red 6, the cigarette smell of your hair.

- first published, Tar River Poetry

A BREAK IN SHADE, from The Heavy of Human Clouds

I’ve named the boulder

shaped like the corpse of a horse

Quartz, dappled with lichen

and moss. In the shadow

garden, I water

the bloated belly, drooping

Coleus, tender Bishop’s

Hat, snowy-edged

Hosta I split with a spade.

The hose coupling

clacks over stone, a tap

like the case of a childhood

clarinet dragged along

the wall of an institution

called school –

I’m head-

locked sniffing

hairy hydrangea

sweet armpit of the bully –

slack leaves

leading me

to watering –

the horsy bulge in a bad boy’s jeans

and the shade –

percussive retreating wood

wind

- first published, Passages North

My Father Eats an Orange, from Greensboro Review

For all my lifting of your

loose pants, so you can

stand; my guidance

to the right, in your blurry

streets, so you can roll

a walker from curb

to sidewalk; my leading

you to rest stop urinals

so you can take a piss—

you have the power.

All you have to do

is curse the fucking uncooked

beans, the low-lit

restaurant dining room

where you can’t fucking see—

and I am ten . . .

at a rock maple table,

doing math homework,

a language I will never

understand, and there

you are, sucking tangerines,

judging miscalculations

never understanding

why, many decades later,

I can’t stand the sound

of men, who love me, eating.