Something hidden that’s unpleasant to discover You’re nothing but rot, under a flake-thin veneer of dusty smile — you’re a desert searching for an oasis, decades of dark mold crawling under the floors of the world. You are less than, never enough, hollow waste of all this space you occupy, hoping you won’t be found out, your vulnerable disguise like dead dry leaves to flame. Thanks for reading! April is National Poetry Writing Month, and this year I’m writing and publishing a poem each day based on (and title after) a clue in that day’s NYT crossword puzzle. My 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 NaPoWriMo poems (about food, GIFs, the Fast and Furious movies, and car insurance, respectively) are still live on Medium, so check out my profile if you want more.

One eating a lot of wings You’re determined to be good at something in your life, anything — your mouth ringed in sauce, you tear the chicken meat from yet another wing, long past savoring the vinegar and heat of sauce. You’ve eaten dozens now, you’ve kept faith, your unshaken belief that you can be the champion, hold, if nothing else, this one small dubious honor, to be at last the champion of wings.

December drink Light snow flickers in the air outside and you sip the drink, savoring the thick fat, sugar and nutmeg, mild spice. You can’t remember whiskey in the sip, reflecting on it now, but warmth permeates this time, whether from nostalgia or its liquid mirror. …

Hallucination, e.g. Another dream and after I wake up it feels like I’ve been saying goodbye for hours — I only dream of absence anymore. After, in the unparsable static, I was left alone, the hours crystallized, honed to a synecdoche — for all this departure, all I know is a slip of fingers away from mine, at last two pinkies grazing for the last time, hooked together in momentary resistance, then the last dissolve.

Greek goddess of victory “The cool breeze ruffles the feathers of your wings.” - from Photopia, by Adam Cadre Your statuesque arm, this labyrinth you barely care we’re in together — it’s so hot here. You shrug. As usual it’s a game and you have already won. You urge me…

Freshly grated cheese at a trattoria Calm flakes & round warmth, a rich secret bite of fat: parmesan saltfall. Thanks for reading! April is National Poetry Writing Month, and this year I’m writing and publishing a poem each day based on (and title after) a clue in that day’s NYT crossword puzzle. My 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 NaPoWriMo poems (about food, GIFs, the Fast and Furious movies, and car insurance, respectively) are still live on Medium, so check out my profile if you want more.

Passage straight from the heart To escape, straddle plasma through the aorta and away, through the machine, your body’s countless engines, the thrum deafening. Find silence, a capillary where you can calm yourself and pretend to forget the eyes you can’t not keep wanting. Drown in anonymity, and sacrifice the…

Shape of the heart’s electromagnetic field A humming enclosure. Burning ions, an undisclosable furnace. What attracts and repels in unknowable tides, the invisible hand gripping and pushing away. Like lips, or not unlike them, tremulant with too much gravity. Saturn’s rings in flux around the pulse of the planet’s core, its resonant storms on the surface. A doorframe. A link of chain. The distances we hold together.

Lost all patience In the moment before rain, wavering sky aching to be made light, your breath burdened by spring air poised taut for deluge, you see now, free of doubt, that you can’t go on like this. Thanks for reading! April is National Poetry Writing Month, and this year I’m writing and publishing a poem each day based on (and title after) a clue in that day’s NYT crossword puzzle. My 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 NaPoWriMo poems (about food, GIFs, the Fast and Furious movies, and car insurance, respectively) are still live on Medium, so check out my profile if you want more.