Librarian / Freelancer
ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
Novel: Eleanor: A Novel in Three Parts independently published
Zine: Diary for a Pandemic: Mar-Jul 2020
Journal Article (co-author): Archives and Special Collections at the University of La Verne: Putting the Repository of a Small Liberal Arts College to Work Online
Some poems on things...
ON WATCHING MY FAVORITE INSTAGRAM RESCUE CAT EXPLORE THE FOREST FOR THE FIRST TIME
I have determined that the more times we do something and don't die the better we feel about it and the more we do it and enjoy doing it these small potentially overlooked joys become what we live for.
Now, if we DID die we wouldn't have to fear it either because we would be fucking dead, so then all these signs point to the fact that we should explore.
Timidly, at first, like the cat. Then with less and less fear basically until one thing or another does kill us.
ON BEING A SINGLE AT A WEDDING
Things to do at a wedding when you are a single
Examine a wooden birdhouse on the table
Watch families come together
Debate on personal blood alcohol levels
Eavesdrop on the woman with the Lisa Simpson phone case as she cold shoulders you out of the one sided convo she’s having with her husband about drones and how they are both teachers and she and he don’t want to talk to you so don’tevenlookoverthereok
Fix your hair
Eat a giant plate of no meat
Smile and stare vapidly at the silverware
Scan the room for somebody to sleep with and realize that most everybody is in pairs already and that you’ll only ever have a chance with drunk people 10 years younger than you wonder if that makes you a cougar then realize you’d rather just stick to form and fuck nobody because it’s less risky.
Try harder to talk to people about stupid things that don’t matter
Wish you still smoked
Have three pieces of cake while watching people you don’t know dance to “Celebrate”.
Leave unnoticed without saying goodbye...
ON TRICYCLES
I only felt things when I read magazines and saw people doing what I always wanted to.
I stared out my window and saw a perfect red shiny tricycle in my neighbor’s giant yard. He had money and I didn’t.
I wondered which one of us was happier. The people in the magazines writing stories, the rich guy, the tricycle, or me.
ON PIRATES OF THE
CARIBBEAN
Some days I feel like A forever chaser, running in circles like an
animatronic pirate in an amusement park ride.
Attempting but never securing,
singing the same sentence in a loop,
slightly behind the object of my desire.
(I love the smell of the water,
it reminds me of being a child.
Dense, murky, solid blackish in color.
I close my mouth when it hits me in the face,
cringe when it creeps onto my clothes
from the dirty overused boat seat)
Other days I think I am that old man who is being tortured
by the pirates, pulled up and down a deep well
on a rope, prodded for information. My wife yells for me
not to give in “Don’t be chickeeen” she says, safe from her high window
in a white cotton nightgown, while I try not to break.