Creative Nonfiction:

Stones & Shadows - Flashquake

What Is Left of Paris - Common Ties



Poetry:


The Last Day
(pub. The Bitter Oleander, 2006)

His lips and fingertips gone blue,
as if the color
leaves the body
just before the breath.

His voice
a child's tremor,
he calls me by his mother's name
and I wonder if he sees
her wrinkled face emerging
from the watercolor haze
beside his bed, the way I've seen
a corpse take root beneath his skin
and start to blossom.

As he flickers
in and out of sleep, I count
the quiet seconds
between each shallow breath.

When he stirs mid-afternoon
and grabs my hand, I know
I'm not the one he wants.

He is reaching for
the world he sees beyond me,
but I'll hold on
as long as he will let me.


Girls
(pub. The New Yinzer, 2005)

We waver, petal-thin, hovering in humming crowds.
Schoolgirl skirts ride up our thighs that shine
like sunlight through San Francisco fog. Our lips
learn the pout and the pucker. Raspberry red
wine coolers at sleepovers, cigarettes snuck
from someone’s cousin’s pocketbook. We tear
our ancient posters down. White crescents in our blouses
throw light across the room. We tentatively tongue
boys with gunmetal mouths, fingers inching
toward their zippers, and what feels like stones
bulging at the pockets. We sense the current
we create; the heads that swerve to chase
the breeze that dances past our knees.
We scarcely fit within our skins.
Shining locks secure our diaries and doors,
and we don’t speak to mothers anymore.