Argument

The power of your skin stretching over your knuckles like a landscape, a work of art, that is majesty. They cannot argue with the beauty of your hands and so they cannot argue with your existence. You are royalty.

ROADTRIP HAIKU #2

Car going sixty.

Moonlit river rushes by.

Helical winds blow.

It has come to my attention

It has come to my attention that I am a romantic and also that the world may end, and so, if there's to be no air to breathe, no room for truth or liberty, and if tomorrow we could be pulled apart in a world cleaved, then all I ask is this: let me hold your hands and head, and tell me what you cherish and dread as we stare down the abyss.

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY ANXIETIES RE: 2016'S POLITICAL ATMOSPHERES

The sound an acorn makes after being kicked, that skittering sound of the nut's hard shell against asphalt, the tap, tap, tap sound as the nut comes to a rest in an intersection.

Impossible apology

The man sitting in front of me wears a Multnomah County Fair t-shirt. He has light eyes and an auburn beard and speaks intensely. Our knees touch as he offers me freshly sliced apples on a red plastic plate. Their fragrance wraps around us like a cloud and I struggle to focus on the questions I am asking him about how his brother's eye came to have a pellet in it. He offers the apples once again as I leave, gently mocking: "They're not dirty." I smile weakly and pick two pieces and a whole apple and my mouth waters as my stomach knots with an impossible apology for my country, occupying his.

KEEP GROUNDED

Faded pink high-tops sit like flower pots, adorning the center of the apartment.  In each, a yellow or a blue sock blooms with frills and improvised folds; laces, dirty and frayed, blend as they reach into the carpet.

STILLNESS

"There's plenty harm to be had in a few drinks," he said—the ash protrusion struggling to grip the end of his embering cigarette between the plosive push and the cryptic grin—to nobody in particular.