Selected Poems

The Order

I want to talk about the concentration camp being built in Utah, where I live, that will warehouse people who are unhoused and force treatment on them for real or perceived mental-health issues and substance-use issues. I want to compare it to the Topaz concentration camp that was built here in 1942 and operated until 1945 under Executive Order 9066, whose name I know because I have to know it. To survive. To advocate. To resist. To not repeat the past even as we repeat the past because others don’t know the name Executive Order 9066 or what it did, what it made our country and its people: ugly, cruel, inhumane. Those who don’t (or don’t want to) know about EO 9066 also may not know that another EO made this new concentration camp in Utah possible, the one written July 24, 2025, whose official title I won’t mention because it doesn’t describe what the order does, what it enables. It would be better if it just had a number, not a misleading title. It would be better if it didn’t exist at all.

But I can’t talk about the concentration camp because my language isn’t welcome, especially among those who also have lived experience with mental-health issues. Those I most want to communicate with will attack me for using the diversity model to give context to what I’m conveying. Those of us with lived experience with mental health have different experiences and use varied frameworks for communicating our experiences. We are and should be polyvocal. Yet there’s a growing push for monovocality—for one way of speaking, for one way of perceiving and communicating human experiences. So I’m not talking, not the way I want to be or to the audience I want to talk to. At least I have this loose take on the haibun.

              The age of pastures
              is over. Detention is
              involuntary.

                            Your right to exist
                            on your own terms ends now.
                            You belong on outskirts.

              Get used to the word
              stern. Your life is a concrete
              slab if you’re lucky.

                            Say no and go to jail.
                            What is this if not jail
                            by another name?

              Like a rose. You think
              you’re like a rose when really
              you’re a line item

                            in a multi-million
                            dollar budget. You’re our
                            ticket, our future.

              Containing you is
              business. Here’s a pill.
              We’re sorry it’s come to this.

                            Swallow. Concentrate
                            means gather. We gather you
                            today for Holy

              Capital, for the bottom
              line. You’ve lost your right
              to leave, so don’t try.

Selections from ‘Love and Cruelty,’ Meat for Tea

8

I know we are in trouble
when you move your electronics
into the guest room

and start sleeping in that bed.
When I find the dark sock
you ejaculate into

tucked under a pillow sham.
When you leave every drawer
you touch ajar in the morning,

every cabinet door open,
not because you don’t want
to wake me with their closing

but because you don’t want me
to wake up and demand
your attention. In therapy,

you talk about boundaries,
your need to maintain them.
The therapist asks you why

you feel this way. I also want
to ask why, but for now I lie
in my bed each morning,

pretending to sleep in,
until I sense you’ve eased
the back door shut behind you.

—

9

For a long time I made up landscapes
because I didn’t know how to talk
about real ones—the red dirt
that stained my swimsuit

when I swam with water moccasins
in Lake Texoma, which wasn’t
even a real lake but one made
by and for men who wanted to fish

for fun, wanted to piss in the water,
to fall overboard in their work pants
and the cotton shirts that skimmed
their chests, which were flat, since

they spent their time behind desks,
not in the fields where their fathers
darkened in the sun each day
and at night revealed their light

foreheads, the bright skin hidden
by their sleeves. It was a privilege
to see that skin, fragile and untouched,
like snow-covered ground after

the season’s first snow. For a long time,
I made up landscapes because I wanted
to live inside them and to shout
from their hills and lakes that we

were in danger. Now I want to speak
from the Blue Mountains and the Columbia,
from sagebrush and western rattlesnake.
From silt and sediment and seed

and fruit, from scabland and butte.
I want to say that we are all in danger—
and that we are the danger. I want to be
a plane dragging a banner, a message.

—

10

At the border, the VACIS gamma-ray
machine has taken an image

of a truck carrying two stowaways,
along with a shipment of Styrofoam

trays, as it makes its way from
Canada into the United States.

Through the truck’s walls, the trays
appear as dark squares, almost

like dry-stacked bricks. The person
on the left stands, revealing a body

with sloped shoulders, which tapers
from its thickest point down

to ankles that disappear into the slats
which make up the truck’s floor.

The body on the right crouches,
knees pulled to chin, in meditation

or fear, or perhaps in boredom.
In the heat, probably. Or in the cold.

In the dark. Their shadows remind me
of thermal radiation, the snapshots

captured of victims in Hiroshima.
But of course this is not then or there.

This is here. This is the border.
Motherless, my own instinct

to protect kicks in. I want these
shadows to have privacy, to escape.

And since we’re being honest
about love and cruelty, I will

tell you that I want these two
to succeed, whoever they are—

the one standing and the one
crouching. I want, especially,

to check in on the one crouching.
That body is too thin and frail.

That body looks scared, a position
I know well. But most of all, I want

walls to be walls again. I want
curtains to be curtains and shrouds

shrouds. I do not want the vision
of a thousand scientists and technicians

that allows me to see into what is solid
so I can catalog the faces of the dead.

—

20

We need to update the stories
of coyote and hare. Neither outsmarts
the other because both are dead,

riddled with tumors, skin and muscle
coming away by the handful,
each body turned against itself

rather than toward annihilation
or evasion. We need to move
Adam and Eve from Eden

to the Gamma Garden, where atomic
seeds spill to Earth and Eve’s
apple has amazing properties

conferred by radiation breeding.
We need to make that apple larger
and crispier, with a longer shelf life,

more sugars and more seeds,
maybe even conjoin two apples
in one fruit for fleshier specimens,

since flesh is where delight lies
and since we’re on the cusp of being
able to do just about anything.

—

23

I knew we were in trouble
long before I knew you,

when as a child I learned
of the white trains moving

across the country like ghosts.
I knew when I hid under a table

as my father talked about Russian
bombs and how the next world war

was coming any day. Somewhere
inside as I practiced my emergency

drill position I knew, knew already—
long before you were an activist

tapping on military jets in the name
of peace—that the war had already

come, silent like fog. Had moved in
and staked claim, settled into our water,

our dirt, been taken up in our food
and our bodies, encroached on

the animals we sometimes professed
to care for—whose destiny we

sometimes admitted was entwined
with our own. I knew there would

one day be walls that would offer
no privacy, that no concrete

could stop what was coming,
that no matter what we did

or did not do, we would be
nothing more than protesters

on the tracks, our legs severed
as the white train came and went

in the sheer quiet, leaving a legacy
not one of us knows how to live

with or beyond. Slowly we are
turning the entire planet, every

living thing, to frass. I’ve known
this for years because the devil

himself held me in his arms, pressed
his tail against my thigh and told me.

—

These sections of Love and Cruelty first appeared in Wicked Alice.

Love and Cruelty is forthcoming from Meat 4 Tea.

Selections from ‘No Sea Here,’ Moon in the Rye Press

And the Mountains Rising Nowhere

And there is a single boat on the water.

And the water is as still as the moment
………………………………………………before thought. And a bird

is about to fly, almost. And the wheat is gone,
harvested. And the fields are nothing more,
………………………………………………nothing less, without

wheat. And the sun hides behind a haze,
but it is there, it is there. And the mountains,

smooth as sculpting clay now hardened,
………………………………………………break into pieces around us.

And the trees hold up their branches, always.

—

Sermon

If a man is in a fruit, then when the fruit is taken and blessed, it is redeemed.
— Rabbi Amnon

If a woman is in a lake, then when the lake
is drained and filled in, it is rescued from water.

If a generation of boys is in trees, then when the trees
are felled and milled, the forest is delivered from shade.

If a party of lost girls darkens the air, then when the air
swells with toxins and haze, the sky is liberated from breath.

If a grandfather is in the soil, then when the soil
is dry and bare, the ground is saved from production.

If a grandmother is in the body, then when the body
is scathed and broken down, it is released from its own ruin.

If a man is in apple, then when the fruit is thieved
and cleaved, it is redeemed from the curse of being a man.

—

Inland Beach

Handful by handful, wind carries

sand over the tops of these lava flows.
My husband and I scale the barbed wire,

climb past sage and dry flowers.

Volcanic rock crumbles, shifts
under our feet, dark as a field

newly burned, dark as shame.

High above, the Twin Sisters
share the age-old story of marriage.

Coyote, their jealous husband,

turned them into pillars; turned
himself into a rock to watch over

them forever. Behind the pillars,

sand forms a waterless beach,
the river visible in the far

distance. We lie together in love

and regret, each of us a Coyote,
our fear turning us both to stone.

We rise and make our way to the twins

whose eroding bodies remind us
even love and its curses will pass.

—

Hanford Site, 1958

We find radioactive rabbit dung
up to two thousand acres from the site.
We find radioactive coyote dung.
We assume the coyotes found the rabbits
……………………………….in their burrows and ate them.

We have come to expect deaths out here
where no one will miss the dead—
more prey and predator where these came from.

We have come to expect—no, to anticipate—
……………………….the larger death for which we gather
while our wives give birth and keep house,
while we file in and out, in and out
…………………..………………………as we are told.

We burrow inside the site and inside our homes,
hoping no coyote will sniff us out
and put an end to this—
………………….our insurance, our bright future, our light.

—

No Sea Here

There are waves here, too. Each morning,
……………… … … ……..they pass from tree to tree.

These waves talk to the air the way a sea talks
……………………………………………to its shores.

Lower, the wheat makes its own waves,
………………………………which sound like streams.

The wheat’s movement reveals the shape
………………………………………of the land below

that, long ago, was carved, and carved again, by water.

—

“And the Mountains Rising Nowhere” first appeared in Barrow Street. The poem takes its title from Joseph Schwanter’s composition by the same name. I was listening to the piece and thinking about the stillness of the Eastern Washington landscape as I wrote this poem.

“Sermon” first appeared in I-70 Review.

“Inland Beach” first appeared in Menacing Hedge.

“Hanford Site, 1958” first appeared in The Smoking Poet. I used to drive by the Hanford Site on my way from Eastern Washington to western Washington and back again. The landscape in that area is already strange, and the story of the Hanford Site makes the area feel even stranger. Its silence and stillness felt eerie to me, as did the sense I had that the world was not prepared for what Hanford would become. The land was not prepared. The air and water were not prepared. The vegetation and wildlife were not prepared. And the people who lived in the area before the site was built were certainly not prepared.

Even those who moved to Richland, Washington, to work at the site were not prepared for what their hands and minds were shaping out in the desert. For this poem, I went back in time and tried to enter the hearts of Hanford’s nuclear pioneers. The poem is based on a secret report from 1958 that was unclassified in 1989.

“No Sea Here” first appeared in Canopic Jar.

No Sea Here is forthcoming from Moon in the Rye Press.

July 24 Executive Order Erasure 2

Given that Fox News host Brian Kilmeade just called for people who are unhoused or have mental-health diagnostic labels to be killed by way of involuntary lethal injection, I’m sharing two erasure poems that use the July 24 executive order as their source text. Nobody, including poets, seems to be aware of the existence of this horrific executive order. This is the second erasure.









July 24 Executive Order Erasure 1

Given that Fox News host Brian Kilmeade just called for people who are unhoused or have mental-health diagnostic labels to be killed by way of involuntary lethal injection, I’m sharing two erasure poems that use the July 24 executive order as their source text. Nobody, including poets, seems to be aware of the existence of this horrific executive order. This is the second erasure.

American Sentences

At the intersection of POTS and trauma, my body goes both ways.

Unable to eat food, I drink olive oil and pray my body heals.

I stick my tongue in potassium salt so my legs won’t twitch tonight.

Poetry can heal my trauma, but what about my broken body?

How many times can I fight men who know they’re killing me (and want to)?

I want to live in these lines, but I also want to live in the world.

Tonight my body will sleep. Tomorrow my body will walk around.

—

Diary of POTS and trauma written in American Sentences.

American Sentences

Betrayed by cheese, my heart burns in summer’s darkness. Still, I want more cheese.

Remy Shand in my head. Death flits in a dream. Hard pass. Take a message.

All y’all, I don’t want to be up right now, but up I am so howdy.

Ever wonder why we crave what we crave at night? The fridge seems to know.

Folks here pronounce hurricane so it rhymes with hurry come, so don’t wait.

The world is harshing my gig. Still, I soldier on in Gen X armor.

I ate all the cheese in the fridge. It was good, and I’m a little shit.

Water, water, where’s the water, we ask an imagined aquifer.

Bringing soda cake to a Utah funeral. Who the fuck are you?

What will you conjure today? Second wife, third heaven? Lord, have mercy.

Remy Shand in my dead. Heads flit in a dream. We pass slant messages.

Go out or stay in. How should I know? My heart is a revolving door.

Deseret is still here shadowing our maps the way clouds darken land.

Almost asleep again. Good time to write down everything that matters.

On aging: My upper lip shrinks like a slug doused in salt. Goodbye, face.

Can’t write fast when the heart burns: from cheese or from love. This is just to say.

Is it light where you are? Here, I see the stars and Elon’s satellites.

Tod: a unit of wool by weight, a load, a bushy mass of ivy.

Why did I write about Tod? Who cares? Why shouldn’t I write about Tod?

Nightmares slip from our folds when we wake. Still, we dream a dream of dreaming.

Got your syllables right here, baby. Seventeen of them. But whose count—

How is language a sage sea studded with prickly-pear cacti in bloom?

Fuck the day. Fuck the month. Fuck the year. What planet am I on? Tell me.

Only Utah light is the light that lets the light in. So they tell us.

Moqui marbles take shape in Snow Canyon. Not yet round but getting there.

Some days, everything is blech. Do not despair. You can unblech your life.

All the stem cells in the world can’t rebaby this skin. Boo wa wa wa.

Things I crave: beans and rice, world peace, lists that aren’t trite. Five more syllables.

These aren’t haiku. They’re American Sentences, some rural af.

These aren’t haiku. They’re American Sentences, some Utah af.

Fucking off my time deciding if it should be af or AF.

The First Wound, a Found Essay in Verse

The First Wound

The first wound was in the right hand
…………………..and occurred at the patrol car as confirmed
by skin tissue found on the car.
…………………………………..It was the only close wound.

The Body

The body weight is 289 pounds and the body length is 77 inches.
The state of preservation is good in this unembalmed body.
Rigor mortis is well developed.

The body is heavier than ideal weight base upon height //.
Lividity is difficult to access due to natural skin pigmentation.
There is no peripheral edema present.

Personal hygiene is good.

No unusual odor is detected as the body is examined.
There is no abnormal skin pigmentation present.
There is no external lymphadenopathy present //

The pupil of the left eye is round, regular, equal and dilated.
The scleral and conjunctival surfaces of the left eye are unremarkable.
The right eye cannot be accessed due to an acute traumatic injury (gunshot wound).

Gunshot Wounds

There is a gunshot entrance wound of the vertex of the scalp.
There is a gunshot entrance wound of the central forehead.
There is a gunshot exit wound of the right jaw.

There is a gunshot entrance wound of the upper right chest.
There is a gunshot entrance wound of the lateral right chest.
There is a gunshot entrance wound of the upper ventral right arm.

There is a gunshot exit wound of the upper dorsal right arm.

There is a gunshot entrance wound of the dorsal right forearm.
There is a gunshot exit wound of the medial ventral right forearm.
There is a tangential // gunshot wound of the right bicep.

There is a tangential // gunshot wound near the ventral surface of the right thumb.
There is a gunshot related defect present near the right eyebrow //.
There is a gunshot related defect present near the right eyelid //.

The Heart

The surface of the heart is smooth,
………………………….glistening and transparent.

Tissue Fragment

Sections of the tissue fragment from
the “exterior surface of the police officer’s

motor vehicle” are consistent with a fragment
of skin overlying soft // tissue.

There are features of desiccation/drying
artifact present within the soft tissue.

There is a granular layer present
within the upper layer of stratified

squamous epithelium.
Focally, lightly pigmented keratinocytes

are present within the basal layer
of the stratified squamous epithelium.

The Hair

The hair is black.
This represents the apparent natural color.
The hair is worn short to medium length.
There is a goatee present on the face.
The body hair is of normal male distribution.

He Came Around

he came around
…………………..he came around
………………………………………with his arm extended
…………………………..fist made
……..and went like that
………………………….straight at my face with his …
………………………………………….a full swing with his left hand

Mace

I know how mace affects me so if I used that
in that close proximity I was gonna be disabled per se.
And I didn’t know if it was even gonna work on him
if I would be able to get a clear shot or anything else.

Um, then like I was thinking like picturing my belt
going around it. I don’t carry a taser so that option
was gone and even if I had one with a cartridge
on there, it probably wouldn’t have hit him anywhere.

He Said

He said, “You’re too much of a fuckin’ pussy
………………………..to shoot me” and grabbed my gun.

Then

Then I took my left arm and I pinned it against
my back seat and pushed the gun forward
like this
…………………..took my left hand, placed it against his
and my hand on the side of my firearm
and pushed forward both of my arms.

Somewhat Lined Up

When it got there I saw
that it was somewhat
lined up with his silhouette
and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.
Pulled it again,
nothing happened.

Um I believe his fingers
were over in between from
the hammer and the slide
preventing it from firing.

Blood

The first thing I remember seeing is glass flyin’
and blood all over my right hand on the back side
of my hand.

……………..Um, he looked like he was shocked
initially but, and he paused for a second and then
he came back into my vehicle and attempted
to hit me multiple times

………………………….He had, after I had shot
and the glass came up, he took like a half step back
and then realized he was okay still I’m assuming.
He came back towards my vehicle and ducked in
again his whole bod …

………………………….whole top half of his body
came in and tried to hit me again.

……………………………………..Um …

Again

I tried to fire again, just a click.
Nothing happened.

…………………….After the click,
I racked it and as I racked it,
it just came up and shot again.

Dust

I was still in this position blocking myself
and just shooting to where he was ’cause
he was still there.

……………………Um, when I turned and looked,
I realized I had missed I saw, a, like dust
in the background and he was running …

A Grunting Noise

When he stopped, he turned, looked at me,
made like a grunting noise and had the most
intense aggressive face I’ve ever seen on a person.

Still Charging

Still charging hands still in his waistband,
…………………..hadn’t slowed down. I fired another set of shots.

…………Same thing, still running at me hadn’t slowed down,
hands still in his waistband.

He Went Down

He went down his hand was still
………………………….under his, his right hand was still
……………under his body looked like it was still
……………………………….in his waistband. I never touched him.

Swabs

Swabs from Michael Brown’s t-shirt / Swabs from Michael Brown’s shorts / Swabs from the palm of Michael Brown’s left hand / Swabs from the back of Michael Brown’s left hand / Swabs from the palm of Michael Brown’s right hand / Swabs from the back of Michael Brown’s right hand / Swab from the fingernail scrapings/clippings of Michael Brown’s left hand / Swab from the fingernail scrapings/clippings of Michael Brown’s right hand / Piece of apparent tissue or hardened nasal mucus from the driver front exterior door of Ferguson [Police Department] vehicle 108 / Swab from the driver rear passenger exterior door of Ferguson [Police Department] vehicle 108 / Swab from roadway in front of 2943 Canfield / Swab from roadway in front of 2943 Canfield / Swabs from RBS on the upper left thigh of [Police Officer] Wilson’s uniform pants / Swabs from top exterior left front door of Ferguson [Police Department] vehicle 108 / Swabs from exterior left front door mirror of Ferguson [Police Department] vehicle 108 / Swabs from interior left front door handle of Ferguson [Police Department] vehicle 108 / Swabs from [Police Officer] Wilson’s “SIG P229” / Swabs from [Police Officer] Wilson’s uniform shirt—left side and collar / Swabs from [Police Officer] Wilson’s uniform pants—left side / Buccal swab reference sample from [Police Officer] Wilson / Bloodstain card reference sample from Michael Brown

The Deceased Hands

The deceased hands
were bagged with paper bags
to save any trace evidence

—

The text above was taken directly from the documents pertaining to the grand jury investigation of Michael Brown’s shooting. Omitted words are indicated with a double slash (//). Omissions do not alter the context of the information provided. Read the grand jury documents here.

May everyone involved in this tragedy find healing. May we all find our way out of this, of this and so much more.