[2024] Spider Leg Sees Sin
Feel it pacing on your skin
Sly arachnid
Arrhythmic and rancid
Ruining the rim of your
Yielding eyes with
Wicked limbs, cracked
Clawing at the sclera
Spindles of frayed legs
Leering ever closer to
The iris, hoping to penetrate
Pin, pop the pupil—a burst
Blackens the eye

Empties indefinite blue

Beckons candlelight

Crashed out in the back pews

[2024] Sometimes I Get Sick
You let the ringing die out
Staring at the reflection on the screen as your face
Melts into the answering machine
Call back several weeks later vetting plague-like symptoms
Took two pills to kick it
But ibuprofen never seems to work

You let your throat dry out
Feel it itch and scratch and
Rip at your vocal chords—
What little you have left is
Nothing more than the shards you cough up onto shaky
Fingertips, push them deeper into the flesh until your hands are
Bloodied on a Sunday afternoon and
Everything hurts too much to take the blanket off

[2024] Palm Reading
Ragged old underworld
Of dumpster diving and picking up
Pennies, flattened
Flung into the bushes
Beside the railroad track

Soft lips into which I cry
Though cold hands continue to pull at
A button or two
Jacket already spilt
Its carcass to the side

There is no remedy
To seeing the starless sky
Trodden in a puddle of steriliser
And spit and serums
Half awake, half aware
Half-low, half-high