All the poems featured on this page are excerpts from my two books The God-like Things (2021) and Moonhold (2019). All rights reserved.
You can also read my {poem + story} series where I share new poems, art, stories, and my translations of old Slavic poetry.
say love
i met a man
whose hand i held and maybe
i shouldn’t have
say yes. say yes anyway
it is more than skins can hold
his tending for my small body
love is such a silent giant thing
he’s so blood close. week old roses
watch the floor of our clothes
my morning looks beautiful in his shadow
under cold waters i am sweating
would i vanish steamed somewhere along the way
carrying confessions with his name?
say yes. say yes anyway
his blue dreams, my blue eyes
a single candle has two wicks
can i hold a life in a palm-sized photo?
like a virgin burning of fire
i run towards my god, before his door i kneel
open please, open
and he opens.
and all is everything
nothing more to say but
say love. say love anyway
say love despite the love
as if souls twin
as if i’ve unforgotten to stay
voices like hands, solid
as if we’ve remembered how to
touch
winter, once
when even ice curls around the rocking hearts
and the wild, plunging us deeper
into deeper
souls twin like our childhood diaries
remembering water
the lives and lives of it
in the soil as if to tell us, not here;
here.
say sea
say sea
and say it slow
say it backwards in my ear
so that maybe i forget how deep in love
i fell to kneel
on cold majolica tiles
searching for a tiny place
white enough like paradise
take me in
say it wasn’t real
say we’ve said it all
until the night
admits
the stars
and the walls so gentle like blue sugar it all melts
and in every way you
find me home
as if i am a dream my body has
maybe i could have loved you more
all those evenings i held you
as if i could hold you
even unkept
time keeps us
like souvenirs, the years
i picked the tiniest pebble and stayed up late
muslin rains to gather us
as if i am a dream my body has
from time to time we almost touch
through the hours, perhaps it could have been enough
to slip ourselves loose from the reasons
and i’m still waiting for something
precious, something small
something more than needed
only ever you
promise you know i’m still here
say the slip of light is what we lacked
to pin my hands on your chest
for not just tonight
when senses become emigrants
and have stopped taking me, say
the leftover waters will not empty me
of you someday
say i wasn’t here again
because you still sleep on just half the bed
because lampposts still measure the heavy lengths
involved in our longing
say we’ll leave some choices
unmade
still warm
on the pillows beside us
and i’ll place along my body tiny pebbles
or fireflies
so the leavings are lighter
and then know how to come back
the god-like things
and our ordinary gestures throughout
the years, passing by the often overlooked
the sometimes unremembered
god-like things
everything in life begins with noticing
so here: i give you back the old house
placed oil jars beside the front doors
for tender are the openings
do what the returning do: love.
because what you’ll smell here is true: love.
and this room has a lemon dome
and this room has spiritual textiles
and this room has curtains of lace fidelity
it’s an intimacy triptych
embroidered traditions like warm ovens
divine cottons, reach far, high
on the top shelf the tea is still waiting
now i too am tempted
to slip back
into echoing, responding and honouring
to stretch myself over the sensitive listening walls
kitchen windows understand:
love is threaded
to the floors
soil-sweat, like us
pressing noses to skins
rediscovering, relearning
the kissing, the holding and the caring
no, you haven’t forgotten the way to love
because i heard your footsteps, bringing me water that night
when you too were struggling with a cold
do we measure time by love’s approach on the circling staircases?
count the roses on the bedroom wallpapers
or try oil.
because i like how our bodies glided
throughout the years, from room to room
how we carried each other
and our god-like things: love.
and we do what the returning do: love.
because what we smell here is still
true: love.
delicate blue southern night
towards asphalt
because that’s how blind waves become approaching
the steel breasts of summer’s end
after i know
what pleasure is
to be suspended weightless
in your arms
smiling
naked as a delicate blue southern night
how could i ever love anyone or anything else
after such pleasure of being yours?
… i, a stellium
of water, you
without words
like true love
fate calls me on the radio
i start loving you again
i meet you
again
even more tender
in the morning
loving
memories sync like an old vhs movie scene
a dance, a melody
repeating.
because you’re gone.
because the cold northern streets are as clean as forgetting
like the bed, so tidied and cold as if almost forgetting
if only for you to emerge
clearer from deeper
more liminal
more real
more loud
when drought pushes us
against blue mirrors
i leave myself with stars
without windows
i like you like
i like you
like oltremarino
a special shade of blue
found only overseas
like Positano
like salt water wearing skin
bare thighs and shy freckles on my arms
like a whole slow day in bed
with silk curtains snaking winds
holding years of miles
like a voice that crosses the land of ice
and changes the course of my blood
like seconds that enter and refuse to leave
tracing promised hands along the quiet archway of my waist
like uncrowded paved streets towards a small white chapel
like eyes of heaven, so clear
like a love ritual repeating i do
each day, as if only to feel
this entire, this
fully
i like you like i love you
sacred, intimate and always
a watched thing
a night
of love or a love
of night, a man
of love or a love
of man
a waning moon
is wearing
omens
i swim with a peach
taste in my mouth
can’t get better than this,
tells me the sea but i know
lovemaking in the deep cool lakes
past the forest cathedrals
a leafy path
that priestess
often takes
you should know
i was the lover of hades
without fear
drinking wine not meant for me
so i oil my body for gentler leaving
to reimagine the inside of his shirt
and jasmine
i rain 9 miles to walk
upstream to visit him
beloved bed the wooden lake
holding branches tenderly
such tender love is
hard for some
because of sound
tongue put on chest
slides towards the navel
turn into a heartbeat, treeman
standing silverlit
unknowingly
in mystery mysterious
i learn to be
a watched thing.
dear lucia
as much as was felt through the childhood eyes
vanilla and ylang ylang are airing from my bathtub
still within we breathe the old things still
i am a sensitive night of lanterns
pulling myself over the furniture where shadows
have spread their bodies over fragile memories
& innocence
in then of then is now
of now even the smallest part
of myself i can’t separate
dear lucia: you were my last doll
the one i still hold whole in my hands
because how can hands ever forget
the hope that once perfumed them
here is where i take him
behind my breasts
here is where he takes me
(blood way)
without hands
take me
this gift of mine
this gentle female heart
of mine
this mine
this ours
& all feelings hit me
in the right places
& this love between us
never changes
