Secrets. Whether they be love, substance use, fetish, fear. A lot of my poems are written far after the event or the inspiration. I take that time to throw the ideas around in my mind, on paper, on my iphone notepad.  But also, it's working up the courage to say what I want to say, and pushing past the idea that it might hurt someone else. However, many of these poems were written when I was with someone who never read my work, so that made it easier not to worry about what I said.  


There are times when poetry feels like a gamble; why do you think poets are willing to bet it all for a poem?

They need to express something. I have a poem all about my ex-neighbors, it's about what a perfect couple they seemed to be, and it drove me crazy. One day (they lived on the floor below) I heard the wildest argument between them. I knew it had to be a part of my poem. I needed to get that frustration out about this couple. They drove me crazy. They were very nice people. But they drove me up the wall, they appeared so perfect. This poem took them down a notch, for me.


In your poem “In a Hotel Room in Texas, Alone” the first thing the persona takes off are pants; what is the first garment a poem takes off? (adjectives? punctuation? convention?)

The public persona. The speaker in the poem becomes a stripped down, perhaps more truthful version of myself. Although many of my poems are fictional narratives, they all have aspects of me. And there are aspects of me that my non-poetry reading friends never see. I'm ok with that. 


I love your narratives; what do you love about narrative poetry?

The small space to freeze a moment or scene in time. I used to do a lot of playwriting and monologues, so these snippets come from that part of my writing. I love trying to make the mundane interesting. What's interesting about being stuck in a hotel because you miss a connecting cross country flight? It's irritating at most, so I pulled at the physical environment, the situation, and my inner life at the time to create a snapshot. 


What new poetry projects are you working on?

Most of the previous work was based on an awful breakup (are there any other types really?) They were about finding myself alone after ten years. I had to purge all of that onto the page. There are still aspects of it that show up, influences of ten years have long tentacles into every aspect of life. But now, I feel my writing is heading a different direction. I'm still in the process of figuring that out. I have so many poems (on my iphone notepad) that I have begun, I'm always typing, or writing out single lines that come to me, and now I'm just starting to look at these poetry beginnings and working with them, seeing them through to a final product.

 

 

 

The first thing I did was take off my jeans,

attempt to admire myself under florescent lights.

Even squinting, it was not sexy.

 

Jacuzzi tub in the corner of the bedroom,

for a seedy and probably sticky romp

from dirt ringed tub to unwashed bedcovers.

 

What did I do? I made a phone call.

The only man I’ve never been able to forget.

I was alone, his girlfriend, out of town.

 

Our conversation, light, about music and our dogs mostly.

Even after ten years, silences, loaded,

until finally “you still there?”

 

But there is nothing sexy when you are alone,

about a hotel room with a Jacuzzi tub in the corner

of the bedroom, in Humble Texas at midnight.

Even with your jeans off.

 

I laid in the bed, convinced I’d end up with bedbugs,

I thought the guys I shouldn’t, what I’d like to do with them.

I didn’t think about the guy I should. Not once.

 

 

 

 

It’s a year later and I still cannot look at the weather

in Boston. Or know the going ons of my old home, six

years of my life have bottomed out on me. But I still

have my car and my pit bull—as my ex told me.

I don’t tell anyone about those times though, I

can bring up the weather or talk about my dog

and whether or not his cancer has spread from

too much sunbathing.  He’ll be the first animal

death of my adult life, my decision in control

of his life.

 

And we can’t all make that decision, like my friend’s

brother.  Instead, some twenty year old meth head made

that decision when she ran a red light and broke his bike frame

and his bones and blew up his brain.

 

How does a person come to grips with someone being permanently

taken from their life? Unlike a breakup where you know that they still

exist and you still exist, now you exist without them at all.

 

His girlfriend losing him. He’s gone and she’s still here to pick herself

up. How does she do that after losing everything she’d found in him,

so suddenly?

 

Does she howl? Sob? Scream? Wanting so much

to break something, someone, everything, everyone.

 

I worry about my heart breaking again

when I think of her.

 

 

 
 

Watches a father hack

his son’s head off, and throw

it out the Pontiac’s window

into the desert. It lands

on a walking stick

cholla cactus.

 

She doesn’t believe in live

armadillos. Spinning out

from under car wheels, lying

dead, on the shoulder of Route 66.

Their noses always point North.

Southwestern animal compass.

 

In the middle of the night,

Holy Mother of the Highway never

prays about her cholesterol,

in a truck stop over a plate

of chicken fried steak

smothered in gravy, and chocolate

pie.

 

She gave up on pilgrimages

to Chimayo when Jesus began

saving the invalids, leaving their

crutches and canes hanging

from the ceiling and walls, cluttering

the church.  They give her

the creeps.

 

Dawn brings the sun over the Sandias,

Holy Mother of the Highway greets

the day with a cup of coffee

and a seat at the blackjack table

in the Santa Ana Indian casino.

Her cards turns up a King and Queen,

twenty. The house’s hand draws an

Ace and a ten, twenty-one.

Winning her last few bucks.

 

 

 

Don Corleone

 

Bruise on my knee from smashing it,

accidentally, into an open drawer.

 

I worry on the tennis court that I might

fall and tear my knees open.

 

Sometimes my Chihuahua gets too playful

and bites me, luckily he’s missing most of his

teeth.

 

My ankle is achy from wearing flip-flops

with no support.

 

My toenail busted from tripping over

a step while wearing the flip-flops.

 

The past two times I’ve had a martini,

I end up puking from 4am-noon.

 

My shoulder aches with my bourgeois

affliction I like to call “barista shoulder,”

pain radiates down my back and feels like

tearing muscle.

 

Sometimes my head feels like an ice pick

is being pushed behind my eye, I take narcotics

and get 17 injections every three months

to ease the pain.

 

 

Standing in a hallway, a doorway,

not my own. My lows now lower.

Blood and drugs and alcohol to keep

me upright—as in not dead—

 

I’m circled by alt

country, languid singing, a

capo’d guitar.  Part of me turns

back to wish we’d smoked cigarettes

while I told jokes, we drank whisky.

But that ain’t my style—

But neither is ain’t

 

I have a propensity for stories—

yes, there were drugs;

Morphine—like some Civil War

soldier on the operating table—

then nursing whisky, in a hallway,

a doorway.

 

But I forgot the whisky burns. Makes

me want to tear my skin off.  While

Justin Towne Earle sings

“I’m no one to deny anyone what they need

to take them through the night.”

We placed our worry in the wrong place—

my lows can only go up.  I never tell people

I have hope.