From The Bedside Guide to the No Tell Motel anthology

After Ten Years Together, We Sneak Off to Make Out in Someone’s Closet

Snuffling, bumping elbows against mops,
hitting our knees at awkward angles,
I squeeze the beeswax candle on accident
instead of you, and you hit your head
on a box of matches, scattering sparks
around us in the dark as we breathe
sweat and dust and the now-familiar soapy taste
of our skins, here amid fly swatters, empty
milk bottles, your back pink and smooth with its knots
of muscle like pulled taffy under my fingertips.
Two blind naked mole rats reaching
closer after ten years of marriage, trying to find
the magnets within us under clavicle, scapula,
hip bone, sternum, that repel and attract us,
the volcanic fissures that separate me from you.

From Rattle’s Summer 2008 issue

Advice Given to Me Before my Wedding: A Pseudo-Ghazal

Better to be the lover than the beloved, you’ll have passion.
Better to be the beloved, a sure thing, a lifetime of that.

He is more beautiful but you,
you have more power. Which is to say,

you are just like your brother. Lift your eyes
and people do what you say. Who knows why.

Men are like breakfast cereal. You have to pick one.
Fish in the sea, a dime a dozen. They are singing for you, now.

Keep your own bank account. Keep working.
Give him a blow job, and he’ll volunteer to take out the trash.

You are mine, says the beloved, and I am yours.
Whither you go I will go. Honey and milk are under her tongue.

Cancer and Taurus, very compatible.
You’re the hard-charger, he’s the homemaker.

Don’t stop wearing lipstick. Don’t put on any weight.
Don’t buy the dress too soon. If you go on the pill, your breasts will swell.

One day you might regret. You might do better.
You could do worse. One man’s as good as another.

Wear my old pearls. Here’s the blue, a handkerchief embroidered with tears.
If you won’t wear heels, you’ll look short in the pictures.

If you don’t wear a veil, people will say you’re not a virgin.
Good luck, glad tidings, a teddie, a toaster. So long, farewell.

From Ninth Letter’s Fall/Winter 2008 issue (still available on newsstands now!)

Married Life

You sing in your sleep, he told her.
He rubs her stomach counter-clockwise.

Everyone says I’m lucky she says
to have you.

She washes his hair with lemon and chamomile
to make it more golden.

He chops vegetables on a wooden tablet he made himself.
She thinks she ought to be better with her hands.

You make my life easier she tells him.
I curse like a sailor since I met you he says.

Buyer’s remorse? An empty cradle,
a woman sharper and shorter-haired than he’d married.

They break things made with care,
watch a pair of otters in the river

twisting and grooming and biting.
They look like they’re trying to drown each other.

What do I sing? She asks him.
I don’t know. I can’t understand the words.

Snatches of song like you’re underwater.
Sometimes, it sounds like you’re laughing.