From Katie's prompt: "Write a poem which includes the line 'ashtrays go astray.'"

ashtrays go astray
a gutted cell phone splays
cigarette butts and grey dust
over books whose pages
yellow like bruises
of atrophied memory

beer bottles crowd the table
like gravestones
commemorating cathexis
of long-dead nights
and the fan wheezes
weakly through nicotene
clouds of conversation

we swat away, lazily,
like the hum of flies
trailing from the open fridge
whose half-light casts shadows
where none were before.

when we remember
to check the VCR's clock
we'll groan at those ghostly
green digits-- 1:17
and collapse in alcoholic heaps

entwined on twin beds
rubbing thin beads
of sweat between our bodies
until finally the warm
darkness tugs us to sleep.

the rearview mirror
suspends my spectral
face over receding tree lines,
bifurcates metallic siding

headlights wink above grinning grills
and we freight forwards
for fear, for beauty
for maximum efficiency

the dash becomes my ottomon
and my shoed feet
obscure the flicks of white paint
passing with the seconds
piled like roadside rubble,
the rawest mountain of the landscape

its heaps of grey
unshared moments separate
us like the snake of a line
between one black dot,
me, to one black dot,
you, superimposed over
the sad pastels of
amateur cartography

bridge ices before road
and the speed is limited
to 55,
the sun licks my ankles
and the engine sings me to sleep

I will wake up in the
sepia dim of a tunnel
that slices through a countryside
I didn't miss,
and didn't miss me.

citric silence (a pantoum)

With our differences and a jug of orangeade between us
We could feel the world spin.
The engine hummed a Hindu mantra
And we just drank it in.

We could feel the world spin
Perched in the middle of a parking lot
And we just drank it in,
In the citric silence of nighttime

Perched in the middle of a parking lot,
You murmured something meaningful
In the citric silence of nighttime,
But only the moon could hear.

You murmured something meaningful
And the engine and I purred back.
But only the moon could hear
That the silence was most honest.

tag

I punched your shoulder—
tag, you’re it,
so it was your turn
to be a playful predator
and my turn to pant like it’s life-or-death
when it’s really run-or-rest,
like trick-or-treat,
you-or-me

and never both
because they conflict
and contradict,
playing their own game of tag, you’re it

where “base” is your bed,
the ampersand between our pronouns
and you always chase me there,
but the game’s over on arrival.

so I cover my eyes
and count aloud so you can hide.
And I can wish between the numbers:
“One…I…
two…wish…
three…it didn’t have to be like this,”

and at twenty I’m already hunting again,
and you are being hunted.

at least the rules are clear,
and our roles are clear,
when everything else is muddied like my knees
that prompt parental probing:
“What have you been up to?”

And boy, have I been up to something.

whichever comes first

some criminals

The scene could have been written into a short story
or sketched out in a quirky movie,
or misinterpreted in a modernist painting.

It could have been so many things
if we’d let it out of the room,
where it wouldn’t be tethered down by
“that was a funny memory” carpet stains
or, “that’s from the antique market, remember?” side tables

It did so well without us, too.
The lunar dent the couch’s feet made
in the sugar-cookie-with-sprinkles rug
had a winning dialogue with the oft forgotten window pane
embracing no particularly special view.

In fact, it’s more of a one-way window,
inviting passersby to see
the domestic poetry thrumming and stagnating
like the sound of the cat’s purrs
on the nostalgia-soaked floors.
We became pieces of furniture there too,
and our roles made us forget our words
for there were too many others
dangling before us,
like “painted china,”
or, “this is what late evenings in small towns look like”

in case you ever need to identify one
in a mug shot line-up
when a police officer asks you who or what it was
that made you who or what you are,
and nevermind the answer to that question—
Be patient, we’ll get there, some criminals just slip away.

untitled, in march

Tipped over the watering can
while her voice
through the window screen
tipped over my heart,
spilled its contents
through fire escape floor slats.

And if you were wondering,
the love in a heart
falls like a slinky—
sometimes clumsy,
sometimes pretty,
and always a little lazy
down a staircase
I’m convinced is limitless.

They say the sky is too,
that its interminable blue
goes on forever
in that honest hue,
granting its
auspice to a precious few—
an iris or two
like your orbs that leaked
those tears of you.

And if you were wondering,
the tears in your eyes
fall like melting snowflakes—
sometimes poignant,
sometimes powerful,
and always a little somber

because they don’t want to fade,
and tears would hate
if you forgot why they were made.

So I tipped over the writer’s block
in front of my notebook’s awning.
Now a new day is dawning,
and while I am yawning,
I am ready for its grace:

It begins here in the garden
with the neglected can of tin.