We Are the Only Poets, and Everyone Else is Prose

Today’s prayer is my body pressed 

against your body. Emily Dickinson 

on the nightstand, still talking to Susan.

Occasionally, I’m the ghost who places 

coldness into the left ventricle 

of your heart, but I’m also your positive 

prognosis even as doctors smoke 

cigarettes and scientists say, 

They should have sent a poet.

And when I sonnet my body 

onto your page and you try to leave 

me, I emdash you—see 

the beauty in that fine thin line

—a bridge grows between us.

Hold me as the ghost I am—it’s impossible

not to love you—in soft focus, knowing 

I’ll be there like that foggy night you 

stumbled on the sidewalk, understanding

there is always one streetlight on your way 

home that will continue to shine. 

Note: Title is from a line from a letter Emily Dickinson wrote to Susan Gilbert. They should have sent a poet is a line from the 1997 movie Contact.

Accidental Devotion Where the Universe is On Your Side

Because there was fluttering when you expected 

floodwater, a guardian angel with her hand on your hip

    while you spun anxiety satellites in your mind until 

    the universe went full tilt, planets pinballing. 

The secret is the world loves you—how you smile 

at sticky children, hold the door open for people 

     you've never met. Some days it’s almost too easy to be 

     helpful, to make a million friends because 

you don't spray pesticides across your lawn

—the grasshoppers and cocoons thank you. We're hanging 

     in there, knowing love is love is love and also temporary, 

     like us. And while you sometimes worry, wear highwater 

jeans, you aim to unwind with hibiscus, hollyhocks, 

anything to give you a little buzz. Remind how you adore 

    honeybees, alive and humming in sync with the cliffswallows 

    who returned with the pair of goldeneyes floating across 

the lake—they're still together another year, seasonal 

monogamy. Like all of us that summer when everything 

     fluttered. All those lifetimes, the monarchs landed 

     in your hair.

I Took the Love Language Test

and One of My Languages is Stop Interrupting 

Today you tried to override my anxiety

with words, calm me down, not let me 

speak. I looked down at my Merlin app

recording the sounds of birds around us:

cedar waxing, rock pigeon, Costa’s 

hummingbird, raven, robin. My screen 

flashed yellow again and again

—the house finch kept drowning

out the song sparrow. And I see us then,

on the chirping patio as avian equivalents—

Rosario’s caretaker and Nervōsus’ poet, both 

with wings ruffled, attempting to be heard.

The Many Forms of Gone 

The keys that once opened the door to your home—gone.


The birthday where everyone you loved was alive.

The border wasn’t a border before a man drew a line.


Gone are the spaces where we were all free to roam.

And the skyline transforms into a cacophony of shadows,

and the forest line becomes a little less dense.

More of us are alone now, minus the echo of past laughter.


We clean the clothes from our beloved’s closet, find 

a donation place down the street.

Several species of birds, the fence around my childhood home,


my first school, my oldest sister.

Every seven years, the apple trees are netted with caterpillars.


Last year’s wildfires, acres of evergreens licked by flames.

Gone is the last bottle of bourbon we bought with my father.


Our recycling bin is littered with bottles, marking 

empty evenings of beer.

Another marriage. Gone. As are the rings. Someone’s hand


on her hip. The shape of a kiss.

Gone is the ivy that wove its way through the cracks


of the fireplace into the living room, even though the bricks


still hold its silhouette.

Each autumn, the trees remind us how brief our seasons are.

The rainstorm washes away the leaves from the street,

the child’s chalk drawing of a flower,


handwritten words I love you dissolving into the drain.

Reply. Or Better, Be with Me

Dear Reader, did you notice the bees

today? Busy in their dandelion duvet,

their world of delight, while we devour 

the ghosts in the snowberries. 

I pray anxiously these days, say—

Text me when you’re home, 

Text me when you’re a homing pigeon,

Sext me when you’re holy. 

You cry in a weedheavy garden—

I want wild nights!, but look,

we’re tucked together, blossomtight. 

Let me take your hand along this path—

your palm = my favorite trail.

And maybe you lost someone you love 

this year, and you hear them 

in wildflowers you tried to name. 

It’s true, the ones we love still speak

to us. Dear Reader, we've searched 

so long for each other, can we unfurl 

together, fearlessly open? Unbutton 

what holds you back and fling it 

across the sky’s room. Ego migration. 

Dear Reader, is it too soon to tell you, 

I adore you? Your belt, declaring: 

don’t settle, and I add down for our feather-

touch, the owls of us. Let’s reclaim the day, 

the slant of light that’s fading. We’re here  

for an eyeblink with our bonfire hearts.

So much wanting—but before we leap 

into the fire together, let’s watch 

confetti moths reveal what we need to know 

in this brief blaze—

carry me hold me love me 

carry me hold me love me carry me hold me, love. 

Note: Title was taken from a line in the Emily Dickinson poem “Bee! I’m expecting you! (1035)”

The Ouija Board Said, We’re Floating Like Rilke  

Said—All dead things soon. Said—We hair. 

Tonight, I have more than I ever had

and still feel loss. Tonight, we blind taste-tested 

vodka—France won. The cheapest of the three. 


The Oujia board said—Belief autumn. Said—

Afternoon fairy of foxglove. Said—Forgive magnanimously. 


I asked—monogamously? Another article

on how to look younger, how to have the body 

of a twenty-something. My brain skinny-dips

in the ocean, has a hot girl summer without leaving 

my skull. Magenta child. Otherworldly. 

Keep your cigars out of my creativity. 

The Ouija board says—Love us 

as foolish gods. Says—Late summer fireflies.

My goddess, my godliness, we gave our power away. 

If the voices in your head still speak to you, make them

show you who they are.

Devotion Where All of This is Poetry

I dreaded that first Robin
    

. . .He hurts a little, though—

— Emily Dickinson

All of this sweetness we savor—a mouth opening 

to another’s mouth—softly—lips queerly rejoicing 

in lips. Not because poetry’s important but because     

     the robin you saved in a garden is. The garden    

     where you planted more milkweed to rescue 

the monarchs. Because it’s all revolving—monarchs, 

milkweed, robins—hold the door open for others 

and call it a stanza, let the woman with 

the screaming children in her cart go ahead 

     of you even if she has more toilet paper 

     than needed. Call it a line break. 

Let it not be a metaphor to love 

strangers and lost dogs. Your poem is messy

and raw with emotion because you live 

a life you can’t sum up neatly. 

     Love odes are everywhere. Love 

     that walking into to a drugstore 

is its own villanelle. Miracles exist 

and so do toothpaste and text messages. Love 

how the speaker talks to God, the Universe, 

the dead, as sometimes you do. We’re queer 

     like that. Sympatico to deities, yet 

     afraid of turbulence. Poetry

writes itself, translates our ribcages

into forests of fireflies, deciphering our heartbeats

into flickering light. We want to flirt

     with the extraordinary—to kaleidoscope a comet 

     across our inbox, trample the tameflower—

O, the well-behaved flowers of our youth. 

What doesn’t haunt me puts its mouth on my mouth. 

It’s okay for risk and plans to coexist just as we 

understand second-person is just a way to hide 

      yourself in a poem. Language plants milkweed 

      for the monarchs. Even that early undreaded

robin is welcome in the garden. Let everything in.

Hey Kel, It’s Em, I Called Because I Just Read Your Poem

Hey Kel, call me, it’s dark. Call me, 

I found a light burning in the sunrise 

and this morning is sweeter, 

not the fixed melancholy of youth.

Hey Kel, it’s Em, slip on my high-

laced boots and call. My secret

password is dontapologizeforthedead. 

I miss you. My tulips have fallen 

in love with the duskbirds who circle 

when we weep. Hey Kel, it’s Em, there’s

an oversized moon tonight and I’m leaning 

into my boyhood. You know that library 

you loved, I filled it with balloons.

Hey Kel, got your text, call me.

I know you say you’re accidentally 

devoted, but what if you’re inadvertently 

lustheavy? Unintentionally heartstruck?

There’s enough gravestones in your yard,

you don’t have to touch each one daily. 

Hey Kel, it’s Em. You know we’re all right, 

right? Sisters who cover their mournings

with a wink, black bras on the blackberry

bushes, the sun is also dying. Hey Kel, 

there are afternoons I aspire to be 

a bird; there are treefrogs and commas 

that end up in the wrong place. 

Hey Kel, can you call me 

back? Hey Kel, I lit a candle. Call me, 

k? On the line. Call me back 

when you can, Kel, candle me 

when you can’t 

call back.

Note: This poem was inspired from voicemails from my sister, Emilie, and the work and letters of Emily Dickinson. “Fixed melancholy” is a direct quote from one of Dickinson’s letters dated 28 March 1846.