published
Poems
-appeared in October of 2018 at The Ellis Review
-appeared in March of 2017 at The Fem
-appeared in October of 2014 at DIAGRAM.
-appeared in the March 2014 edition of [PANK].
-appeared in August of 2015 at Souvenir.
Your Photo Today and Your Phone
-appeared in June of 2015 at Powder Keg.
Alpha Centauri, The Crook, and an interview
-appeared in April of 2015 at Yes, Poetry.
Prose
Gloss: A New, Stark and Sultry Poetry Collection by Rebecca Hazelton
-appeared in May of 2019 at Entropy
These Assholes from D.C.: A Review of Telescopes and Other People by Joshua Norman
-appeared in April of 2016 at Entropy
We Could Have Just Had a Threesome, Now You’re in Love: A Review of Bad Sex by Clancy Martin
-appeared in September of 2015 at Entropy.
-appeared in February of 2015 at The Good Men Project.
Poetry as Courage, on this Veteran's Day
-appeared in November of 2014 at The Good Men Project.
Month-long feature of poetry reviews
-appeared in April of 2014 at Luna Luna Magazine.
I Have a Crush on the Girl in My Phone
-appeared in March of 2014 via The Listserv.
Review of Edward Mullany's Figures for an Apocalypse
-appeared in January 2014 at The Volta.
Out of Print
Secret Service & I Am Very Tall
-appeared in July of 2014 at Luna Luna Magazine.
The Paramahamsa
-appeared in the July 2014 print issue of The Unrorean.
The Compassionate
-appeared in the summer 2014 print issue of The Moth.
-appeared in January 2014 online at The Fat City Review.
Politics
-appeared in the 2013 print issue of Bluestem.
To be loved without
the pronunciation of love
upon telephone wires
or sheets is to be loved
without contract‒as if
the reason we are here
is simple‒like twin fawns
together, underneath
the circle of a streetlight.
Heights
-appeared in the 2012 issue of Epic, the University of Missouri's undergraduate literary journal.
Since you did that I can’t climb
more than three flights
of stairs. They say a fall
from just fifteen feet off
the ground can break
your kneecaps and push
your femurs straight into your heart.
Six feet can crack your skull. You know,
after 9/11, one of my teachers
warned me “Jonathan, you’ll be looking up
at the sky a lot more lately”
and I think of you, a scientist,
how you once told me
that if I ever wanted to survive a plane crash
to just fall flat with my arms and legs outstretched
to distribute the pain.
Love is a Kitchen with Two People in It
-appeared in the 2010 issue of The Reed, St. Olaf College's annual journal of existentialist literature.
I sit at the kitchen counter,
watching you wash carrots in the sink.
I sit and I sink.
Easily into my stool,
like a child—
I watch.
The way you wear your pants,
so high on your hips…
I get it, you got me.
You cross your arms and gaze at all
the herbs and spices.
Analyzing forever, I suffer.
As you make me lunch,
two o’clock in the afternoon.
Where You Fell
-appeared in the 2009 issue of Epic, the University of Missouri's undergraduate literary journal.
you melted the snow
and left a trellis of vines
underneath a first-floor window
somewhere outside
Iowa and I laid there,
in the snow & the vines
until my palms ached
and my body shook
at the hands of a force
that only gets worse
with this constant rain
that blows from Portland
straight through I-70
and the clouds, they swirl the sky
like soup beans & brown eyes
over this uncivilized city
that's trapped by a state
and where you are now
I doubt the clouds can reach.
But maybe this storm is slow to rest?
My ghost will haunt your soles
and fill each step
and fester--my poems like sores
that I still write for you by hand
will go from a box
to a man & to a van & to a plane
that kneels down for me and convinces you
that fate is just a word
and heaven can wait and we can try again.