snowbunnies

I'm a writer and sound engineer raised in Tokyo and New Jersey. My essays and poetry have appeared in Southeast Review, Essay Daily, and Puerto del Sol. I received the Bowdoin Nonfiction Prize and an ... [+]

Image of Long Story Short Award - 2022
Image of Poetry
1.

For a fire it didn't hurt much
more than sore teeth or
sour dates, salad day fates
make ski-in tapas plates
cold and oversold. Me and the
snowshoe hares wear our
golden wares, expecting Vail
on route to Denver.

Shrimp shrapnel and two half beers
in a downtown hotel bell
service and gratuity included in
more spores of salvation silver.

Grayed-out outpost of all air
twisted in tinkered terpenes.
$10 in a drummer's bucket—
so orion-eyed. They skin themselves
as allies then dissolve like alkalis
in boiling holy water.

Your sin is your slave master,
and you love your sin.
Most of you claim you love to sin!
It might feel good to
fornicate with your girlfriend.
It might feel good to get high
but what happens when you're broke
from all the weed you smoked?
You are miserable.

By my brisk city brush-by
the street preacher prophesied—

Run! Run! Run!

2.

Unexplored, listen more
alone observing dance floors.
Many moves of minor Gods
the gauze of cause and lawless
wealth was at the bar
and drunk on self.

A minute before New York midnight
the host lifts a dog-sized pizza over her head.

In 2022, it's almost funny. The Dick Clark's
New Year's Rockin' Eve of my childhood
when outspoken anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy
picked the hunkiest cop to french at 3...2...1!

Patterns over-power.
Pyrotechnics over US Bank.

brocade, comet, comet,
chrysanthemum, brocade
dragon eggs, pearls, pearls,
brocade, comet, chrysanthemum,
strobe, brocade, comet, dragon eggs
Strobe, strobe, chrysanthemum.

3.

—Do you think about moving?

Oklahoma. To family. Or Alaska.

No I'm in Bailey. Forty minutes
west from Denver.

For a fire it didn't hurt much,
but — he honks —wind
worries him. Wind was what
threw the power lines in Boulder.

                                                                                                                                               Our hearts go out
                                                                                                                                                          to those in
                                                                                                                                      Lewisville and Superior
                                                                                                                           and the whole Boulder county,
                                                                                                                                  it's absolutely devastating
                                                                                                                                                                   uhm,
                                                                                                                                       our firework shows are
                                                                                                                                 safe and there's no fallout.

—Do you think about moving?

My youngest wants to move to Montana
and be a plumber. Do cowboy shit.
He's like me, not so
invested in school.

In the last twenty-four hours 6,000 acres
of Denver were charred by wildfire.

Five died in a shooting spree.
Six if you count the gunman.

4.

Low halogens halos,
the family and
the double date.

To Jerusalem. Somewhere quaint
not posh, but still somewhere I
can get a good massage.

A toddler squeezes a crayon bigger
than her hand. Her guardian leans
like a drinking swan to discover
the lines of her daughter's mind.

Don't start with me missy,
I've flown coach my entire life.
The only reason we're flying business
is he's sixty and has a bad knee.

I lick the plate of
chocolate yuzu cake.

5.

He pulls the robe over
my shoulders and leads
me to the steam room,

an almost athletic heat
brea'thing in oils of
ylang-ylang and lavender.

Shuttering my.
Shuttering my
double darks.


In the almost Uber accepted
as the cold killed my phone.

In the swimming frostbitten hypoglycemic eye.

Jason Moran inked the hammers blue
and pianoed II-V7-I chords until each key
whipped the Gampi paper.
Deborah Roberts collages the
lips and eyes of murdered
kids with ripped roots in
Haiti, in Ghana, in Charleston.

I see it like a Sundae cherry.
I see it collapsed under

triple light. Feeling
for a receipt
to leave
my mom
a note.

I see, I see the bouncing
red eye of a snow bunny.
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