Poetry

great reindeer

I can call your name quietly, if you wish

or I can scream it across the deserted

shore as the waves thunder onto the 

firmly packed sand and lash the dunes

if you’re looking for me you can find me

among the marble and slate monuments

to the long turned dust and the freshly buried, 

watching as the crows fly eerily overhead

golden summer light begins to darken 

until you have equal parts: light and dark

mabon, the harvest, the moon throwing

half a stone, the goldenrod ripening

and calling to the bumblebees drawing

competition from the tenderly pink amaranth

I can call your name three times and

you’ll be back here with me in my garden

throw a coin over my right shoulder and

make a wish I can point out the great reindeer

in the sky but I cannot make you look

if your eyes are bound for the earth

Autumn Lover

my autumn lover drank a bottle of poison 

just to speak to the dead

now she’s never hungry, sleep

is no longer her friend

her demons hang heavy in the dark circles

under her eyes, tells me she’s never cried

in front of another so I just pull her closer

my greatest secret is we’ve never kissed,

not even once during the long darknesses

when she held me tight in her arms

my autumn lover pretends she has no emotions,

says she’s cold and unfeeling down to her bones

but when I take her hand it all starts to bleed out,

she tells me she’s more afraid of love than death

because love can destroy a person completely

my autumn lover walks hand in hand with 

the dark season, has seen the rot

taking to the bloom in the full 

light of a cruel sun

she wants to protect me 

so she’ll never touch me,

too afraid that I’ll 

break like fine glass

my autumn lover is full of darkness and

she prays to no god, 

she swallowed a bottle

of poison to speak to the dead, 

but she says 

I’m the only ghost who ever talks back

Too salty

once I told you my chinese name

高玉环

but you couldn’t pronounce it

you said you didn’t like the taste

of the food I cooked

that the spices were all wrong

that I kept crying in the food

and making it too salty

you were always mad at me

always keeping me leashed to you

once you told me if I didn’t open

my front door 

that you would jump off the bridge

and I believed you so 

I opened the door but-

you said you didn’t like my attitude

since I found out that they were gone

gone before I even heard the crash

asked me when I would get over it

while he still lay in that coma

you told me to stop crying into my food

and complaining that it’s too salty