"Diamonds and Gold"
Published in The Periwinkle Pelican, Spring 2025
I’ve dined on oysters by a finger lake
and felt blue air cool on my face
while salt and lemon waltzed on my tongue.
But my Death Row meal is a red gravy dinner
in a Philadelphia townhouse
on a Sunday night
where bricks close us in
and I can’t squeeze between a chair and China cabinet
without braving a lipstick kiss.
No Great Escape can take me anywhere much better than where I’ve been,
but I’d like to see one more Great Lake.
I’ve danced beneath fire on Lake Ontario
and slipped through ice melting at the shoreline.
I’ve held a lover’s arm while flying high
above the Great New York Fair.
A love I keep in a saving’s account
for the next person who earns it.
I pity anyone who thinks love and friendship are less important than crunching numbers.
My heart bleeds onto every birthday card I write.
Memories are currency
minted in love.
Love for life.
Love for each other.
Love for ourselves.
The worst things happen to the best people sometimes.
Diamonds are dug on battlefields
ripped from children’s cold hands.
“Oven Light”
Published in Dust Poetry, Spring 2024
Sweet naivety.
Unwritten recipes.
Orange kitchen on a dark afternoon.
Somewhere north, somewhere cold.
Somewhere I once called home.
Little socks on slippery floors.
Pots and pans.
Verses and chords.
Little band, little man,
waving a spatula sword.
What magic
to make something of nothing.
What magic
to love and bring forth existence.
What magic
to be old and stale
instead of eaten.
When I’m lost after dark,
find me by the oven light.
I’ll watch the flour grow.
"If I held up the Sky"
Published in Perception literary magazine in Syracuse, New York, Fall 2019
If God ever asked me,
Would you be Atlas
hold the sky and clouds
soaked with tears
of humanity?
Would you bear a family’s grief
over their child you never knew
so they could be free?
I would say yes.
I would dwell in all nine rings of hell
not to earn heaven
but so no one burns again.
No heart would ever ache from a missing part.
No child would have to grow up in a night.
I’d keep the storm clouds at bay
except for those who love the rain,
and leave space for the sun to shine
on those who shiver.
And how much happier,
brighter, lighter
more beautiful this world would be
if I held up the sky,
for everyone
but me.
"The Undefinable It"
Published in Perception literary magazine in Syracuse, New York, Fall 2019
It is not the crosses I counted down the highway,
but the foliage that burned
orange, before the gray sky,
like a warm kitchen
sweetened by maple
on a Saturday morning.
It is a family's laughter in a new home
over old photographs
and Chinese takeout:
a Friday night well spent.
It is the scent hanging in the hall
on a student’s first day of school
and last—
the scent of a new beginning.
It is the first warm day of spring
and the first crisp wind of fall.
The first dance, light as a cloud
with the hope of flight.
It is the chilling Church choir, singing
at Christmas mass
Hallelujah, Oh Holy Night.
The sunlight woke me Sunday.
It is that sunlight, and, I believe
a rainbow in the early November
without a cloud in sight.
It is the hope in what we leave behind—
that my words will suffice and
survive.
It is this, all this,
and so much more.
It is all we know
and hope to find,
yet we can never define It.