I am convinced that Evangelicals are more obsessed with the occult than actual partitioners of magic. For a group that blanches at the thought of Pokémon or Halloween, they seem to have an almost intimate knowledge of magic. Whether or not this was for insuring that us young and impressionable Christians never joined the ranks of our local goth pagans and Wiccans, Christian media’s approach to further demonizing the occult is heavy-handed.

Christians are very good at commercials. Doom and gloom? You got it. Bad acting? By the bucketful. I learned a lot through those commercials. My mother kept the…

Photo by Gabor Barbely on Unsplash

Trapeze Artist

From an upcoming untitled essay collection

There are certain undeniable truths you learn as a child. Of course, these don’t really hold much mettle as you get older, but the impact remains the same. For example, I was pretty sure that running away to the circus was a thing.

It was mentioned so much in different mediums, from cartoons to books to being used as a turn of phrase. Was there some special program for soon-to-be runaway children that all circuses had? Some sort of universal code like the direction you turn…

It should have had a name

IN BIG BLOCK LETTERS.

What will we call this?

When I gently touch your hand,

And stand on tiptoe to reach your ear, lips brushing.

What should we make of this,

This shapeless thing?

This thing that finds my hand inching towards yours in the back of a cab,

The thing that laughs and says it’s better that way.

I could not write it out,

If I tried.

You could fill my empty glass again.

2–4–1, sticky and soda sweet,

My legs brush yours in bars and

My hands itch to write you deeper into me.

I want to peel this girl,

Like a god damn mandarin.

She is so sweet.

Realizing.

Her voice was scratchy,

Jeans cuffed and

she had these huge, brown eyes.

Of course, she would be the one

To wake me up.

Some many of my poems begin with “I”

I have deluded myself into a vision

Of my own importance.

I have imagined that I have painted mountains slick with snowmelt

And rorests ripe with spring

From my words

And from me only.

I imagine that I am more important than the very yellow

Yolk in the middle of the egg.

That I am as necessary as the thickness of the plate

Preventing your hands from burning.

I am as needed as the plywood crisscrossing underneath

These brown vinyl booths.

I am as important as the few sips of coffee that…

I hate those stacked coffee cup things. The ones that come in their own little wire holder, making it so that you slide each up out like its a ceramic little pringle. Who decided that getting a cup for coffee had to be even more difficult? When I see them for sale on second-hand groups and in thrift stores, there is always one missing. Not two because then the whole thing would look empty and sad looking and thrift stores deserve better than empty and sad.

That one cup was probably the only one the previous owner ever used. Figuring…

News of the dead is rolled out

And no one rings bells for them.

We gather in parks and around

Weather worn monuments,

No one moves or makes a sound,

Our solitude slipping over us, even in

The bright sunshine.

Brisk walks and no one nods,

We are at odds with our humanness.

How do we move into this new space?

It has been creased over and coffee shops windows make one ache.

If it were possible,

I would peel pack the first layer of the sky,

Open the lid of this box we are trapped in,

Look the creator…