some poems written during the summer and fall of 2025.

Trees and Treeing

The tree is treeing no longer and you watched it fragment into hundred of shattered branches dancing out the door.
My entangled arms caressed the lightning streams
and my knotted eyes were too weak to see
the danger posed
by those without time.
I felt the pebbles at my feet
and watched them manicure the calm elapsed by twisted green and forgotten shade.

Did you know I heard the hushed voices
and watched the embers entertain
a circle bound
to the rhythm
of a fading flame?

It was all a speck, shrugged off skin, the same that autumn granted and abandoned
in the slushy torment where I lounged, ambivalent and still standing.
Did you see my delight in the afternoon rain
that extended from that young woman’s young children’s playdays
before she filled the house with strangers who bury mice at my feet
and say strange prayers that may be older than me.

Old women are are young children
and strangers forget that cuts scratch out decades and instants all the same
I am the tightest circle in my trunk and the weakest digit in my outstretched palm.
I am comfort and charity, endurance and envy, absolute and absent
as i slouch toward your rotting concrete
the same that I happily cracked with my thundering feet.

I heard them say
they’d cut me down
on Thursday
But I only thought, which one?
They extend across the horizon, unbroken and complete.
But you live without time
And I pity the day of the weak.


August 17th, 7am

I play the body game of getting lost in flailed limbs. It is my birthday. I am alone, playing the body game of getting lost in greens turned blue. And then again, back to green. I’m trying to reassure myself of my self in a way. I gathered people I enjoy spending time with, and kept saying that I really just want good conversation, laughs. There’s this repetition, as if I’m trying to convince myself, I’m not sure if others hear me lost in the loop, the reassurance. I guess it is a part of acknowledging and moving past other lives I’ve had.

A new poem about dancing

And I return
Blue slipping past
A smudged edge
Charcoal on the bridge of my hand
Extending the fragment of my finger tip
Til collapse, catastrophe
And I return, the arch bending, tracing, murmuring
“Have you ever fallen”
Of course!


Punk Time

A court date is the eternal return of the same
Deferred judgement for fabricated crimes
The petty tyranny of frightened hordes
Bended backwards in stuttered time.
A mob chases its own movement
Anarchists trapped in a rainfall of letters
To addresses abandoned
After the day where my roof was filled with cracked boots, reckless renegades, and the sound of a note pitched to an accelerated ambivalence.
I am back at square one, in a game of murmurs
I misheard the clown cars hum in the crackle of cicadas
But did they not rev their engine so loud in the forest of forgotten names
That I let my face slip in their flashing gaze.
She forgot the DIY HRT, but remembered the drive through donuts
Keep your eye on the circle, not the whole.
A cookout drive-thru completes the circuit,
But the cashier keeps forgetting my food
So I drive around and around
As the hitchhiker tells me I have such pretty hair
Does she know I hide my thoughts in the tussled mess?
I forgot my comb, but remembered where I lay my head.
Leaving too late, trying to return again.


Birds in the JFK Terminal

The din of hurried movements
Framed by haphazard chirps
Birds fly in holding patterns
Float above granite skin
Shuffle eye lids
Dream of wings caught between surveillance schemes and flying dreams
When the heart beats in a fragile cage
Doubled back on a haggard frame.
Traveler, do you wander to lower or higher worlds
Overburdened by the song slipping from cracked beaks
Cry for affectionate flight, flow w/ the jet stream.
A song burrows into the heart,
vibrates wings and arms,
taught cry for air,
breathe,
expand as the terminal screams.


Loblolly Pines

Green Needles Bristle
Above the waves of overtold stories
Stuck in youth
Where words are yet to have meaning
Highways open onto shadowy paths
Smelling of pine and draped in Spanish moss
Do you remember how the sand gave way
To cratered waterways
Rolling balls, tumbling time
I am a child playing a game for four
I am an adult playing a game for two
On the loose unpacked sand
Thudding rather than gliding
Amongst the Loblolly Pines


unititled 1

The competitive funeral director tries to assemble the most successful grief. He listens for the loudest wails, the same that harmonize with the softest whimpers. He collects bodies, but deals in feeling, knowing the mourner is a bundle of cries, curses, and contrivances. Mary at the Cross stares at the laminated Mary with Child. She inhales a plume of holy water, buoyed to the surface of the sky. The Catholic priest is stiff competition, with his ritual, his divine transubstantiation. If the director gathers bundles of feeling, the priest cuts the rope–the sticks strewn about form a cross that is grief, singular and of the world. The funeral director sighs. It is so difficult to compete with true believers.


untitled 2

I had no buck eyes red
To wear to my grandfather’s funeral
My father suggests a golf polo
To honor his father’s pastime
“Something to add to your wardrobe”
And here I sit, in my vivienne westwood,
Honoring one of my past times.
Destiny is always untimely
We don’t tune our clocks
To the eruption of red
Making its ways b/w the pews
After or before my westwood arrived
So that I snaked past the green and yellow mosaic of 9th street
To find a buck eye on the rack of Mr. Throwback
Why “The” Ohio State, he asked.
Another certainty I lacked
For they all reside in bronze
Grandpa Tom’s alchemy
Melting steel into buck eye red


An Interesting Cruelty

Kyo tells Rocannon that the wanderer will take a companion, for a while. Wordlessness is not loneliness, he reminds the wanderer. But the wanderer will always be a stranger or a god, marked by the outside of community or nature. True companionship is the wind between the leaves, the hum of a bicycle wheel over fresh pavement, the unspoken ease of a flowing pen.

There’s a relationship b/w wandering and walking,
Strolling alone and moving toward a group.
Disorientation or comfort.


Steve Aoki in Nassau County

Gabber Americana
Nostalgic Release
Sincerity, not even, just fun
Steve Aoki is the groundhog of Nassau County
Fall has arrived
Fatigued cake
Sanctioned rave, a flyover
Could you just dance, with a smile
On your face
Not question intent
Not craving criticism
Maybe that’s the gift Steve gives
After having ripped his shirt off
So soon into the concert
At the bar, in the subway, they would drink forever given the chance
I’m sober in a field of grass
watching neon and pastel overexpose
On the Jumbotron

We’re getting confused by ideologies, identities, and choice.
Collapsing distinction unfolding form the world
Into the heroism of selection.
Don’t assume the depths of the soul contain treasure.
The prize of possession is bullion turning into liquified gold,
Slipping from fingers not yet wet
With the black water humming beneath.


Deli Girls at Nowadays

A wormhole rather than a blackhole.
Pulled through time to a different space,
same sweat, different flesh.
When do things crack open,
splinter into shoves and pushes,
feet plunging into dirt-stained cement,
but the leaves of a spiraled pathway
have curled into windcut skin
and black finger tips stained with bike grease:
Bend backwards, “but I’m not bitter”,
that time turns thudding kick drums into
metallic arrows, screaming silver
moving at cybernetic speed,
tendrils that pull hollow arms back into a tangle of codes, glances, and battle cries.
Stumbling through Foley Square
to find slogans that hurt.
metal bike frames don’t bend
the way of finger tips pulled back
to the top of a wrist.


The tight spiral

I imagine that I am at the center of a spiral and that I am pulling it tighter and tighter. It coils around me, but it also is me–a continuous line bent into tighter and tighter curves. It’s like writing a sentence that never ends. Other times, it’s like a thought gathering more associations, more intricacy. A line of thought that wraps itself into a bottomless center. Sometimes, I fear this spiral. I wonder if it will suffocate me, if every coil is a sharper edge bearing down on the inside out line that I am.

But then I remember that the spiral is in two-dimensions. And that if I wrap it tighter and together that it will stretch into three dimensions, spiraling up and down–outward even as it continues to grow tighter and tighter. The line becomes an hour glass. Its edges unspooling, now duller and welcoming. Now flying and crawling and digging and swimming–all while still spiraling.

Review

The Mermaid Parade, Coney Island
A punk on the subway
Public Works: Act 1, Storefront for Art and Architecture

two poems written during the winter

inspired by ursula k le guin, jackie wang, e e cummings, positive dialectics, student protesters, and skeptical faith

Trans-Actions of Care

You were cradling the wailing stone
as long as its pitch matched the din
of the pigeons flapping wings.
In the moment, where he startled them,
scattering grey in the cool sky
behind the draped figure gasping for air,
I heard the thud of the wailing stone
cracking the plaza with its heaving sigh
opening the fleshy earth to the prick of our spiked bodies
interlaced in dived diversions of the wailing stone’s churning path.

Did you know the wailing stone
cries softly in blues and yellows
the same that dot the rushing stream
where canaries carry tuna in their erect beak?

I could never hold the wailing stone
my hands crack under shrill asks
the prying of compassion slices through a cooled granite
fragments fall into the rushing concrete
a slimy joy found in shattered serenity.

Did you hear how they composed the wailing stone
of furtive glances, bit lips, and auburn eyelashes
the collapsing faces along the ridge of discontent
an impasse extending from gasps to grasped silence
in heavy words of the mason’s code.

I never heard what the wailing stone said
I only heard it scream.


untitled

In the broken voice
Squeaks through
A half-remembered vestige of prestige
Yearn for after-thoughts
That tumbled from Giants’ lips
Before landing in the reflective pool
Of scratched pages.

At the table
carvings and theses
strewn about on dinner plates
that clattered in tongues
I’d tried to nail down
In their squirming place.

Vanity’s auburn hair
The cracked skin of an unsure handshake
Arms and legs contort in fractal spiderwebs
Are you the seeker of an ambivalent gaze
Or the follower of a mismatched path?

Neglected pleasantries, distorted apologies
The clarity of smudged vision
Within the cracked wide-angle lens
How brave to not encase
This graveyard of cadmium and zinc
That shrinks the horizon
Into a bottomless tin

Oh vanity,
Discard me
From the divine asymmetry

some poems written during the winter of 2024-2025.

a collection of poems written from fall-winter 2024

who are they the children of?


My absence of discipline
Reflects
My difficulties with self-love.
I need to recontextualize discipline
as an act of self-love.

Modulation

Appreciation. A discipline of self-love.


a candle at the vigil

Hear the ringing
in your ears
as the grief
of the world.

Feel the sting
of autumn air

Everything moves
at its
proper
pace.


Kicking Glass

Blood Stains
Dog Hair
Cream Tile
Caked Dirt
Onion Peel
Walk Walk
Cover Toe
Blood Stains
Paper Towel
Foot Steps
Black Plastic
Trash Bag
Walk Back
Drop Hay
Fumble


A prayer for headphones

May I walk down the street
Ensconsced in sound
So I may hear
My own thoughts
My own taste
My own love with the world
I have created for myself

May I ignore my neighbor
Put plastic, rubber, and foam
Between the conversation
The interaction
The exchange
On my way out the door


Nowadays

Sitting on the wooden platform
I hear a voice in my head
the one that finds
in each movement
an affirmation
love
for
myself
I think about the cycle of breath and self, that each momement I breathe in, I bring into being my self.
“That’s what its for,” a dancer remarks,
as if mocking my need
to put into words
what can be expressed in movement.
A trickster trans girl
mocking in that way that good clowns do,
where you find what’s already known.

And maybe I feel the pull of someone
who feels in a similar way to me.
I feel clumsy and excited, the giddy
of knowing I might slip.
And how far to fall
between becoming a girl
falling in love
or falling in love
with myself
as a girl
in love.

Not to get
Too caught
Crushed
But to feel
Like the sidewalks
Stumbled between
Writhing bodies
At the electric distance
Where I am far enough
To lose the space
Between our feet.
Laugh, Trip, Stumble


Drunk

Jade refracts
Kisses fall
Uncovered sleave
Dance once a week
What if I want to fuck you
And figure out our connection later
I’d dream
In nights spent
Dancing
Losing myself
In your breadth

Drunk on the B Train
Crushing Orange Line Beers
Grand Street Bound
Too Slutty
Too Smart
My words caught in my mouth
Fell asleep
So long ago
Erica on the train
My concrete brain
Everyone at Columbia
Looks at me
Like I’m a faggot
They must be So Smart
To Notice.

My biggest flaw
Is that I don’t
See
My own
Beauty

Drunk on the B train
Writing poetry to find
The rush of my glance
Meeting yours

Drunk on the B train
I refuse to leave
I kick my feet up
Spit My Beer
Fuck You
I am a faggot
Fucking women
Fucking men
I’m the shallow pool of spit
We bathe in
We breathe in


Pull-ups

On the railing
The J train rattles by
Yawning autumn
Against the Williamsburg high rise
Nourish the cramped kitchen
Let the smoke flow
From the haunted toaster
Spitting flames
Half past
My forgetful face
Pressed against the grimy scene
Bike by
Stop
But turn around


Your Polaroid

A photo of us
From an Asheville bar
Fell out from my journal
I hadn’t noticed it
Tucked between the unwritten pages
Long past my structured notes
About why we couldn’t be together
But I remember wanting nothing more
Than moments alone in the booth
Than the timer ticking toward flash
Then the press of your lips as the shuttered closed
On a photo of us


A Mouse
curled up
on my kitchen floor
writhing
almost like a dog
rolling on his back
almost, but not.
The pained spasms
of an unsure foot
and me
with a broom
trying to help him outside
or at least
remove him
from my sight
compassion
or my selfish desire
to let live
what will die.


A score for four ppl
1) Think of your name
2) Now think of another name
3) Discard the first and second for a third.
4) Introduce yourself
5) Take your partners name.
6) Go through your day with a new name.


scratch, jest, ride, drink, advance

This is of a place, spiraling through the circuit party at market, maybe too many drinks and joints along the east river

This is the movement in and out of the ID card to track my movement in and out of campus

This is the cash register being chased, the pursuit of some things or experiences that might make me feel like I’m moving

And I am caught in the movement of modulation, cycles, pusling tangled webs, root systems stretching underground, relations and relationships, vibrations and ethics, qualia, sense and sensation, the interwoven web of things that maybe in the last instance cohere into a structure-in-totality.

I do not have the language of freedom.


How do you hear a place?
Take out a sheet of paper
close your eyes
select a place that matters to you
try to focus on the sounds of the place
Can you hear them?
Where does the sound exist?
Pan
Echo


Dancing, an image

The carpet gave too much
with my step
not quite finding
the rhythm
of interlacing hands
of jumps and crashes
“i thought about dancing with you”
what a terrible thought
to betray in hushed confidence
after your friends passed the bottle that smelled of biting and pins
i took your hands
that drifted through the air
like a ribbon, twirling and unfurling
set free into a ruin of thread
Unearthed, Unearned Confidence


There’s something funny

To seeing your ex
In other people.
At first,
The Fear
of an unplanned encounter
of a flood of emotions
from hands gliding through a mullet
from plucking the hat off to find their face
the fading ache
of nights grasping each other’s form
of finding the momentary embrace of a bathroom stall
a handheld walk home
among the snowflake shadows
But now,
the resignation
of dyed haircuts stretching down into braids
of electronics recycled into sigils, wrought iron, and moss
from the fumbled assemblage of self
From youth becoming a whisper of presence
Among the faces in the crowd


“Mansions”
There was a moment of truth
In the afterglow of spurned affection
“Don’t try to make it work
If its not your end goal”
Children of divorce, drinking and dancing
In the after glow


Liminal notes

Lost between
the devil and the cloud
a pretzel and a carrot
my classroom or my desk.

Before Sunset,
a name escapes
falling asleep
on the benadryl periphery.

I’d walk in the cold
I’d bike in the snow
I’d sweat in the greyhound
my skin
pricked by frost
wet by snow
sticky by seats
all to curl up
in the space
in between.

Embarssingly, I saw megalopolis immediately. I was so underwhelmed that, despite drafting this review on my way home from the theater, i forgot to post it. Now, into the void:

What must eric adams be thinking? the feds seized his phone. The standard corruption now receives higher scrutiny. No one in new york is surprised by a crooked cop. I feel like celebrating his downfall. Look what they’ve done to my beautiful boy! And what better way than w/ Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis

The old man has lost it. He sold off the vineyard; he’s widely derided as a creep (but, as wild card mayorial candidate andrew cuomo will tell you, he’s just being italian); he either used AI or fabricated negative quotes from critics himself; he wanted eitehr a live actor or an interactive ai to burst into each theater; he’s set for a disasterous opening weekend. The megalopolis lore can go on and on and on.

But, maybe like adams, coppola is a man out of step with time. A provacateur clinging to a way of transgression that no longer exists, like adams craving the corrupt mayorial lifestyle.

At the cold play concert.
35th st, lily’s crepe $13
I don’t think megalopolis was good enough or bad enough. It lingers, like a pervy old man, trading in women.

The central conflict between Caesar and Mayor Cicero is shallow. Should we let things be terrible like they are now or should we work together to make things better? For all his musings on time and consciousness, I’m not sure Coppola has more than an interconnected psychobabble. Am I for one love psychobabble, but his doesn’t feel lived in. Caesar is design, a revolutionary break, but not so much taht family structure or the institution of marriage would be uprooted. In fact, the film is predicated on the trafficking of women. Wow from Caesar to Cassius; Julia from Cicero to Caesar.

Julia’s characterization is particularly flat, morphing from party girl to muse/therapist. Wow, delishishly played by aubrey plaza, climbs to renown and riches through Caesar and Cassius. To her credit, Plaza gifts Wow with a trickster ambition. She’s hyper-sexualized and turning the performance up to 11.

But Driver’s Caesar, the genius revolutionary, is unconvincing. His charisma feels off, like someone selling their vision through how unhinged they are. He tries to present himself as an uncoverer of natural reality. Like the discovery of time and the conceptualization of consciousness, megalopolis is now a part of life itself. But when more of the movie revolves around the relationship between Caesar and Julia, the whole magic of his ideas is lost, replaced by a drab romance traingulating the death of Caesar’s previous muse/therapist/mother–wife.

Coppola’s depiction of sigificant otherness rehearses a tired script of male genius and female inspiration. The liveliness of gender, relationships, and identities–those things that would change if the megalopolis is to be–is never explored. Instead, we are presented with the megalopolis as an enormous macguffin, a magic make everything better, liveable, and just for free, for ever (?)

The supposed conflict of the film is between mayor Cicero’s preservation of the status quo and Caesar’s insurgent cosmopolis, the implications of either’s worldview beyond shallow mismanagement/corruption and untested explosive change isn’t made into interesting story beats, particularly because so much of the film circles Caesar and Julia.

The design of the world of New Rome is exiting. There is still a flash to Coppola’s worlds, even if they can swamped by rehashed psychadelia. The special effects are idiosyncratic, giving them a stylized feel that only has the edges of butgetary restrictions.

I think Eric Adams and Coppola suffer from similar problems. They are so convinced of their entitlement to the city, as an object of exploitation, that they trick themselves into thinking they own it. Adams delusional bid to trade favor internationally a reflection of his own ineptitude at being able to help the people of new york city. He can only enrich himself and his cop friends, turing the other way as they shoot off wildly in the subway.

Coppola’s delusional ownership over the city energizes his Caesar. Caesar’s genius of discovering a magic material that allows cooperation and a better quality of life is all framed around himself, his singular artistry and exceptionalism. Caesar is a stand in for how Coppola views the director, a revolutionary figure able to show a different way of living together. This humanism falls flat immediately because of the pervy old man, his flattened view of collaboration that emerges from a singular, authorial genius. Such self-indulgences can never understand how we can better world together.