Fiction
I am a fiction writer who generally writes contemporary adult fiction with grounded speculative elements. I write poems, short stories, and novels.
You can read my sociological short story here in The Sociological Review.
I am writing a novel about a 29-year-old woman who can see visions of herself in the past and future. She’s never a version of herself older than 30 and begins hearing a menacing voice from her past. It is about how those with difficult pasts learn to build futures they never imagined for themselves. It features authentic representations of disability (including autism), asexuality, the foster care system, and nonbinary identity.
My poetry can be found below.
Poetry
Published in Poetry Ink by the Moonstone Art Center:
Human Nature
There is something beautiful
about the universality of humankind.
Cultural anthropologists scribble theses on
how every group has cracked open an egg.
The ingeniousness of the dumpling was felt as keenly
by the soldier scarfing a bao two millennia ago
as the drunk college student bolting his midnight calzone last night.
Every culture has a Cinderella story,
launching her into the upper echelons with such velocity
that she is perpetually scrambling midair like Wile E. Coyote.
Every ethnicity thinks they are uniquely late to events.
Every community has a rite of passage into adulthood,
although I grant not all of them involve
a chocolate fountain in the basement of a JCC
like mine.
Every society has music
because they all have heartbreak.
Every baby has the instinct to smile.
People are always dancing,
always joking.
I am told we were always kissing,
perhaps before there were even lips -
but that cannot possibly be true
because you and I invented it.
Published in Eastern Sea Bards:
Heart Points
You care for my longevity
and suggest I try to earn the
"heart points" on my phone,
measuring strenuous cardio.
Good for the heart and lungs, you say.
Still, I am resistant.
as I was to the presidential fitness test in gym class
my chest raw as a ran back to each wall of the gym
wondering why the president cared.
I could pontificate about the neoliberialization of using technology
to internalize health to take the onus
off an ailing healthcare system.
Instead I ask you
what does a fitness app know
of taking a berry blast edible
and gossiping with my best friend
with Buffy on in the background?
How does it measure
the way my heart pushes off to the races
when you send me a snap of your smile?
What can a calorie counter tell me
of cinnamon rolls on a cold day
when the sun is gone by four?
What grade can the algorithm capture
in the calculation between working late and dishes
and staring at the Netflix menu?
I could track a run
but does the computer in my pocket know
running fucking sucks?
How can 10,000 steps compare to
the miles of radioactive ruins I traversed barefoot
just to eek the small joys out of this life?
My father died at forty five
of a cancer so rare we don't know
if it runs through both our genetic codes
or if he picked it up
nuking spaghetti-os in a Tupperware.
But all the heart points in the world
could not carry him to my graduation.
So tell me
what the robot in the app
knows of my heart.
Published in Masque and Spectacle:
Loving Grief
I love grief
and when I say this
others recoil like admitting this feeds the elephant in the room,
like grief is a party foul
rather than the centerpiece, the favor, the buoyancy.
I love my grief
because it is intimately related to yours,
because I’d rather mine be comforting sister
than repressed nuclear family.
I accept my grief
with all its jagged edges and weakened elastic
but I’ve known mine a long time.
Maybe yours is unfamiliar
so its pointed teeth and dark gleam
still scare you.
My grief is ever-present,
in the shadows of triumph and failure,
so I try to dress it up every day
not just for special occasions
with the ribbons of hurt,
the soft leather of time.
I like that it is both
unconventional and elegant.
It moves gracelessly and steadily.
The jewel of grief’s resume
is the strength of its web
in the face of loss.
Even if you’ve tried to cut it out of your own flesh,
and believe me,
you are not the first,
it connects us,
injected into art and action and values.
It is the distinct paradox of being all I am
and taking everything from me.
I live with it like the temperamental roommate
who never cleans its dishes
but feasts anyway.
I love grief because it is love,
parading in its mother’s heels of change.
What else can I do but love it?
How can I not,
when it defines the assignment
of this relentless existence?
Published in Collide Zine:
Published in Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo:
I Am Aging Into My Mother’s Body
I am aging into my mother’s body
as most of us do
but somehow the transmutation into her,
the molding of the clay by the gentle fingertips of time,
comes as a surprise.
Perhaps it’s because
she had highlighted our differences
when I was a child
despite my Gilmore-girls resemblance to her.
I have dark eyes where hers are green.
My hair is long and reddish.
I did not develop breasts too early,
was skinny in the right way
while her body was put through a Ninja Warrior course
of abuse and sexualization and degradation,
obstacles to self acceptance
that she knew to bulldoze for me
rather than repackage them as loathing
and re-gift, still
I am aging into my mother’s body
although I do not carry her scars.
I am unmarred by any c-section incisions.
I do not miss a chunk of flesh
from her vintage 70s smallpox vaccinations.
She believed strongly in sunscreen,
like like an offering to a sun god,
so I never developed a melanoma to remove.
Nevertheless, the flesh starts to loosen
around the muscles on my upper arms.
There are small, dark stretch marks on my stomach.
Lines deepen in the corners of my eyes where I inherited her laughter.
She was not one to ever push me away from facial expression,
embraced a resting bitch face
despite the inroads of emotion leaving wrinkles, but
I am aging into my mother’s body
and while I was mostly inoculated from self doubt
sometimes I have an errant thought
like a mosquito
that I should lose weight.
The skincare subreddit
advises me to look into Botox and fillers.
But the truth is
my body has carried me through hardship
like a camel in the desert
as my mother’s body has her.
I remind myself
I have always found her beautiful.
I never understood her aversion to tank tops or shorts,
never thought she should liquefy her shape
to pour it into an uncomfortable vessel.
So, mostly, I am honored for the opportunity
to age into my mother’s body.
Published in Mocking Heart Review:
LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE
Our first kiss
was next to a pile of garbage.
We laughed about how Philly it was
on a sidewalk so uneven
I would believe a monster of the week
had surfaced through it.
It was hot
in a time where there was no such thing as
unseasonable
anymore.
I thought I had it figured out –
I have two hands.
I can hold the fluorescent, bubbly giddiness in one
and the weighty, leaden sorrow in the other.
Both can be true.
The man huddled on the pavement
will likely be jailed for losing the cold embrace
of a paycheck in a landlord’s economy,
and still I marvel at how our hands fit together.
Politicians will play ping pong with my body
in the name of meeting in the middle,
and still I find it thrilling to climb into your lap.
Our 1040s
and the religious institution that unwittingly grew us into weeds,
flushes cash into annihilation
and still I have the audacity to raise butterflies in my stomach.
But falling for you
as the soft apocalypse
shuffles unfailingly forward
has taught me I was mistaken.
Being with you has not changed how much burden
I have heaped into my baggage
but it makes me feel lighter.
And I know, intimately, that the crystalline fragility of joy
feels obscene in the wane of humanity,
but the choice is not happiness or despair.
It is to be numb
or to care at all.
And you care.
You do good
with no score to settle,
just to make the rigged game,
with its plastic station wagon of colored pegs veering off course,
easier for other players.
So if it all burns
whether because the greed finally melted us down
or we torched it to start over
I will kiss you as it rains ash.
Published in Write City:
On Poverty
Bare knuckles
scrape by
on the bottom of the barrel.
I bob for paychecks
but is it treading if I am always underwater?
I lease my existence month to month
from babes with mouths full of silver spoons
who extoll the values of
travel
relaxation
self-care
consumption
as the real cold hard wealth.
Tell that to my 401k as it builds lactic acid
as I outrun the metallic kiss of the barrel of
another goddamn heat bill
planted between my shoulder blades.
They romanticize the grit under my fingernails
as I claw out of the red again
but concrete shoes keep me grounded.
I thought the constant pounding
was part of the chase
but it is my own heavy footfalls
on the hamster wheel.
I'm sure if I found a way out of this
that would be overdrafted too.
To those who have cared for me for just a wedding
Weddings,
in all their sugary spectacle,
are odd places to be perpetually single.
I put little importance on marriage myself.
I feel no ill will to the knot-tying
but often I am without a plus,
marooned at the island of the miscellaneous friends table
next to the novelty photobooth or build your own cupcake bar.
These are social events under the dressing, after all,
so I can always bum a friend during the mismatched vows
just for the night.
It can be an acquaintance I haven’t seen since college
or a coworker from another department,
a cousin of the bride’s I have heard so much about.
In a certain playground magic,
we share smiles and finger hors d'oeuvres recommendations
brought together by nothing more than a shared love of the groom
and a distaste for the father of the bride dipping his speech into misogyny.
The needles moves from sufferable to mildly enjoyable
when there is someone to make sarcastic eye contact during the macarena
or gossip with about how the drinks are hosed down.
We are destined to know each other for the eternity of someone else’s declaration of love.
We will exchange numbers,
and I could tell you about their failed first marriage
or how they’re afraid to have kids in a dying world.
But sure as I am dodging the bouquet,
and resisting getting set up with a cousin’s uncle’s son,
I will never hear from them again.
And I consider it strangely beautiful
as I think of the people who have passed through my life.
These temporary companions are perhaps the shortest term rentals
for the connection is broken once the party bus turns into a pumpkin.
However brief the flash of the photographer's gaze
they have touched me.
But of those I have loved,
I am especially grateful to
those who care for me for just for a wedding.