“I don’t know how anyone could do this to me,” you declare as you sip my tea. Your split tongue wraps around the lip of the mug and tips it back. With the other tongue, you confirm, “I am the victim.”  The cafe table isn’t conducive for the spikes on your back. You complain to the waitress, who can’t do much, then you decide she’s a bitch once she’s out of earshot. The universe is conspiring against you.  Having been inside of your stomach, I’ve learned to tune you out withou

Found the body of a bird in the grass  Beside a 6-story bank downtown  An Eastern Phoebe, lying low  With a cracked wing and a bent crown A band around its ankle Tells me its death won’t go unknown, Thank god for that little tracking band,  Thank god I’m not grieving alone. *Note: this poem is a fictionalized (or should I say poeticized?) version of a story I was told by a bird conservationist, and the unfortunate number of songbirds that are killed each year flying into glas

Perhaps the very first atoms  were breathed into existence - not a bang - But an exhale As reflexive and natural as our own. And we prescribe some unknowable noise to this Kaleidoscopic beginning But as I wonder up at the sun and her sister stars, Patiently hovering in my late evening sky, I imagine a quiet start. Perhaps not silent, But whispered A hush As if to sneak up on space and time itself As a stubborn child might creep the stairs after bedtime To risk the treasures o

Performed at Poets/Speak 2026 at the Bangor Public Library Before the rise of civilizations There was no “in” the forest There was only the forest Like there was only the plains Or the mountains or the grasslands You either stood in a bosque of antiquity with the pines and the chestnuts as your council Or watched an endless, crossless, uncrossable sea lap at your feet,  because boats weren’t invented until at least 50,000 years ago And before that, you could not even fathom y

First Place Winner of the 2018 UMaine Poetry Slam I can’t promise that this poem is going to be any good.  Odds are, it won’t be the one...

First Place Winner of the 2018 UMaine Poetry Slam It’s become more apparent recently that all my molecules have turned to that of wool....

Photo by Nola Prevost Poem published in Spire: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability, Issue 8 We, the impossible seeds of life, We Sing tales of days past As if it is not the present We are hoping to serenade. And We, the stewards of the land, We Sail over great bodies As if it is not our own brethren In the shadow of the hull. And We, the veins of the planet, We Make light of our feats As if we are not someone else's future, As if our ancestors are not proud.

Here in the forest of forgiveness We drink bird song and eat purple pansies We daisy chain four-leaf clovers  and frolic around the fire...

In the end, we are all lost in the woods Shoulder to shoulder with foreign fauna, Holding staring contests with the flora, We are walking...

"A red light in the dark" photo by Tim (Unsplash) This poem has been published in the Open Field Undergraduate Literary Magazine...