Text first published as “Campfire: Ossipee, NH” in Thin Air Online, summer 2020.
Sweet Dream
I dreamt I dropped
a yellow, 4-lb. bag
of Domino Sugar,
and it burst, millions
of granulated, white-hot
stars whirling past their big bang.
The universe expands, a sweet
accident across linoleum,
and I cannot contain it.
Arch, whorl, loop—
galactic fingerprints
make it worse, leave sticky traces,
cause buckles and voids,
heap nebulas, scramble
surfaces like an empty
paper bag crumpling
in on itself.
—first published in Tilde, vol. 3 issue 1, summer 2020
“Haiku on the Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope,” December 2021
Hale-Bopp
My father’s arm was a runway to the sky,
steady beyond the branching dark. It was 1997
and my loose tooth clicked like a camera shutter
as I followed his pointing hand from star to star,
to the blur he called a comet. To me, its name
was like hail popping on a windshield, or hard candy
and suddenly the taste of blood swelled—
dirty ice-tail, falling tooth. Awe and ahh
are twinned on my tongue, tumbling the same
in every replay—father, trees, shutter click.
Obsession, you have bent me to the sky,
given me a face as taut as Orion’s bow.
I am left counting teeth with my tongue,
calculating orbits, holding my breath.
—first published in Variant Literature, issue 11, summer 2022