“Leyla” and other poems

"Maybe we should never have left the forbidden paradise
the winged key fled taking flame"


How Things Go

And like everyone else, I'll want to start a band


The Mirror

We sat a while in silence like two strangers, facing each other. I didn’t ask her what had happened or what she had seen, or believed she had seen, in the mirror.




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Where?

Did she tell me before we were born, we were waiting in the dark? Like leaves hanging on a black tree?


Image shows a close up of a baroque ceiling fresco, depicting figures of all different kinds in clouds with angels, dramatically posed and dynamic, positioned closely to one another. The background is pale blue, and gold molding with marble statues can be seen around the bottom of the image. The colors of the figures in movement are warm in contrast with the white and grey clouds.

Study a Cause

Its seclusion, its great swaths of stillness. Wakefulness in amber.


A grayscale photo of the full moon, partially shadowed. The moon sits closer to the upper left corner of the image, as if a banner or flag. Photo is by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash.

The Matter

What is the child / in the moonlight?


A vintage orange television sits on the counter of a pale yellow kitchen.

Comfort Nausea

I’m in the sunroom of my Minneapolis apartment when my mother tells me she’s been watching Heartstopper.