Glass

Moon
Sheriff's Report
.............................................................................2
Untitled Love Poem
.....................................................................3
Trespassing
....................................................................................4
Dream Journal
...............................................................................6
Scenario
..........................................................................................8
Waiting Room
...............................................................................9
An Apology
.................................................................................10
Catwoman Redux
......................................................................11
Half Moon Bay
...........................................................................12
24 Poems for Scotland
..............................................................13
Cranberry Sauce
.........................................................................21
Passenger
......................................................................................22
Flinders Ranges
..........................................................................23
Coping Mechanism
...................................................................24
Delilah
..........................................................................................25
Elegy
.............................................................................................26
Knuckle
........................................................................................28
Nocturne
......................................................................................29
Morning Song
............................................................................30
Moon
...........................................................................................31
You helped these poems (and me)
work themselves out
I wake in darkness;
the mountains swallowed

the sunrise. What’s the point

of love that can’t burn up

the sea? Paradise was cotton-bloated

as a carnival doll.

This is the year of drawn curtains

and snot-stained pillows;

we smooth our shadows

over scorched asphalt.

Sometimes I’m struck dumb

by windows searing through the night.

I dream of paint-peeled houses

where light pauses in the doorway

like a spectre. The silence

is a kiss goodnight.
 dog’s bark pierced
treet just as night
d its blue jaws around the sky.
hbors reported a sound
dead trees reaching from the dark
needle in the gut.
hoed through the dry pits
d shoved to the back
heir cabinets or locked
n attic-tombs.
d, ‘The skin of your joy
ttle as sun on dirt.’
nd the dog nosing
hed carcasses of cans
nd the dumpster,
trailing like an umbilical cord.
shopping carts cast
like shadows over a homeless
s sleeping body.
r that night I responded
call by the highway
e a stag lay mangled
motorist’s hood, headlights
ing rusty with blood.
creature bleated limply
the engine’s heartbeat.
Love passed me in the street
like a perfect stranger. She didn’t hear
me say hello. I called

and went to voicemail.

I wore heels for love
and she didn’t notice.

From the TV she sighed

like cherries on silk.
She left notes in the margins

of my book. I waited
for her at a bar
but she was kissing

under a peach-light sunset.

She dipped her face
into a dozen roses

while I sat in traffic.

Her perfume clung
to every stranger’s shirt,

her lipstick smeared

on every collar. I couldn’t sleep
knowing love lay

in tangled sheets.
And when her finger
finally trailed my cheek I flushed

frozen and could not touch her.

 mill had been shut for years
we went in anyway.
back door was unlocked,
metal grimed and broken glass
ered like teeth on the ground.
nted to leave
veryone was already disappearing
the dark so I followed
to the basement where the dust
o thick it coated Jonny’s glasses
swallowed our footsteps
ow-like silence.
eft, no richer in horror
we rinsed off in the river
I swam by a fish, rainbowed
e sunset, floating
up in the water.

ould have taken a tug or a hop,

stayed barbed at the top of a fence
I swayed and felt my skin break.
was the summer my heels split
walking everywhere in new shoes
Aiden wanted to cross the train yard
ck blackberries. It was my idea,
lly, but maybe I just needed to prove
I’d do anything for him.
can still see the scar
e the wire bit my wrist,
e I tottered, one leg over.
dn’t hurt much, at the time.
the sharp curve of a crescent
hovering above my veins.

III
I didn’t want to climb the tallest building in the city.
It was midnight, but the sun
still clung to the sky
like a lover’s perfume,
and we were drunk.
Tom said my name and his kiss
felt like a question mark.
So I let him hoist me over the gate
and crept up every rusty step
of the fire escape, conspicuous
as the moon in my yellow dress.
When we reached the roof
he wrapped his arms around me.
I would never see him again.
But nothing warned me of that tonight,
no neon sign flickering
among the skyscrapers, no constellation
forecasting in celestial glitter.
What did I expect to see other than the streets
rushing endlessly towards the horizon,
the traffic lights winking at no one?
Bezos called
t our date, his voice
mium smooth and crisp
the phone. He said
ould be late,
ad to wrap the world
re and smoke. I pouted;
do you wear
man with a vision?

led on a black dress,

ing across the perfectly
cured lawn like an oil spill,
e reflecting pool
would mirror
ntrance, assured, intentional,
as a cloud in white linen.

s get out of here,”

ooned as a glass of wine
ened the sun
ur oysters, the ice
ring like diamonds.
astic-clad waitress
ed the table, her face
lar and set mannequin-stiff
rown, and Jeff
hed the small of my back
the ease of someone
s never been wrong.

ook me home, his mansion

p glass, stabbed
sylvan paradise bloomed.
The lounge was painted all black,
and the walls were scaled
with every vinyl record
ever pressed. He put one on
and began to dance, hips
cautiously jutting forward,
and I couldn’t help but suspect
he’d never listened to it before.
ow you know exactly why
eart beats no faster under your hand.
-“NVN,” Anna Akhmatova

scuffs into knots

skin sunsets
flushed all spit
sweat and pink
waiting to bruise
itself red jolts
ke iron through ice
your mouth
y as guilt

peel back the bark

of every once lover
reated me like lace until
he couldn’t
lit me like an envelope
pat out a bite
of me

want to scrape me smooth

ass how can you
nything but smudge
dges into yours how can I
nything
but let you
There’s no receptionist
so I sink into the marshy depths
of a scum-green couch.
Schubert quietly passes

through the room like a draft,

almost mild enough to stifle
the stale smell of cigarettes
haunting the carpet.

The stacks of magazines

offer outdated gossip;
my doctor’s face smiles weakly
from a row of business cards

that are as featureless as this room.

I cannot believe anything
would grow here as I reach over
to touch a potted orchid. Plastic.
e loved like a serpent,
carelessly dragged myself
any warm thing. Held
a whole heart and bit. Felt want
dy my body. Bitter
fruit of despair, no arms wrapped
enough to wring me out
like an apple in a fist.
mouth winestained a cruel bruise.
I checked my teeth for poison.
e is hissing a forked song;
don’t make me choose between pain
rouble. I can’t swallow
any more of myself.
There’s a world where she never snapped
grief apart like a pair of cheap handcuffs.
No purr of leather on leather.
Her gloves and boots are still in the closet
with her winter coat, chalked
by Gotham sludge. She comes home
exhausted and flops onto the couch,
trying to smooth the stiletto bites
from her toes. Another day
of stale coffee, filing cabinets,
her boss’s eyes on her ass.
There’s no grace or seduction
in how she rolls down her pantyhose
now, unclasping her jewelry.
Her earrings are fake,
of course. Glass gems in brass,
but she loves beautiful things.
She feeds the cats and smokes
on the fire escape. Life
hasn’t broken her, just worn
her down like everything else
in this city, but sometimes
she pauses in the hallway
to hear the night cry out.
Sometimes when men
whistle her way, she grips her keys
between her fingers like claws.
we going to stand here pretending
un hasn’t taken a flaming bite
s? I borrow the shade
our body, our fingers tangled
e kelp knots lying flaccid and crusty
e sand. We wade into the water,
ouds of sea foam lather our ankles.
ocean has never known peace.
es curl in jagged crescents, shout
arrival. Your pink face
ssful as the sky today
here’s a shipwreck inside me.
the moon teasing the tides
can’t help conjuring the storm
I can’t help becoming.
For Grandpa

1
The sky dumps its gray down
while people scatter like gravel;
stone spatters darker, and elsewhere
I water with my blood
a longing for it.

2
Nothing has changed
when I come back to Nick’s flat:
the laundry still makes
a shriveled canopy of the ceiling,
a candle spiderwebs the neck
of a wine bottle, yesterday’s dinner
congeals in the kitchen,
guitars haunt the living room,
the windows fog up, Glen Street
disappears.

3
The Italians smoke outside
The Pear Tree in winter,
breath steaming to the heavens
like tar-throated dragons,
as if they could stop the snow
stubbornly dusting their shoulders.

4
Cuith Raing yawns out of the earth
and threatens to swallow me.
I ask the Canadian couple
to take my photo,
 we of standing in a giant’s jaw.

e sun glazes the morning,

gh to drag us from our rooms
blot pink the grass with bodies
ing their thanks to the world.

streets are lonely at night,

lery of windows
ming vignettes of home.
walking nowhere
purpose will spring from motion.
iles melts into the dark
ain joining a river.
the streetlights
their halos in the distance.

Hogmany we huddled
irewood, waiting
anuary to arrive
crown of flame
dismiss us
the cold.
evening’s gin
ed to ice
ur bellies.

bus to Glasgow is empty

oothbare mouth
whistles
out of Edinburgh’s cobbled sprawl.
The world pauses
from a distance, caught
in the window like a photograph:
the fields quilted yellow
with rapeseed, the sheep
scattered like lint,
the wind turbines great
candles atop the hills.

9
Portobello hunkers sober as concrete
at the water’s edge, the shore glittering
with broken glass. Everything battered
to gray under winter’s tedium,
even the sea marbling to black,
the horizon stripped from the sky
like an aging layer of paint.

10
From my window
in the evening,
Arthur’s Seat burns
like a slice of the sun.

11
On Cowgate and Pleasance
I saw a man kick a woman
into the street, heard
his heel crack her jaw
while she clawed
his ankle. Then they sat
on the curb, crying,
faces cupped in each other’s
hands, terrified of themselves.
 and I take the train
Andrews; his dad’s house
es like suburban gingerbread
ng fig and apple trees, morning
, camellia. The veranda
kingdom for the finches.
d cooks us breakfast
worries what early spring
do to the birds,
disaster feels impossible
is home where spare slippers
our cold toes
n summer the sky
hes gold until midnight.

swathed Glencoe
ows itself, our car
eblink on the highway
e mountains time-rubbled
smeared rusty with grass,
ds swallowing all
e sky’s endless conquest
he land.

rd wings the eaves

aird Hall, soaring
ugh dust speckled curtains
un until the caretaker
an air gun at its heart,
mall body interrupted
re hitting the ground
oiselessly as a glove
15
Fringe opens Waverly Station
like an artery, gushing
from the platforms, rows
of ambling bodies snared
by medieval kitsch
on the Royal Mile,
narrow streets corked
and the walls caked
with flyers, the air
a cocktail of tongues.
Maybe it was the fatigue wilting
my jostled shoulders
that made the old Scottish woman
pat my arm and complain
consolingly about the tourists.

16
Sam steers his bike
through Morningside, defiantly
claiming the middle of the road.
The streetlights are beer brown
in the night and I’m colder
than I admit, but we march
along, over the boundary
of what I call home. Every stone front
tenement is another gallery
of lights resisting the dark.
I think I could get lost
here, and I do.

17
49 dead in Orlando. We gathered
in St Andrews Square
I felt far from home,
ther that home had grown
om me.

hauled the scaffolding

s the Meadows,
slick with rain and burning
r the weight.
and cobwebs turned us
ky as phantoms
e co-op basement
e we unspooled VHS tapes.
film spilled out in oily streams.
n the installation was finished
atched the viewers prowl
nd the structure, the piece
dering at their footfalls,
cting like tattoos upon their faces.

e years later,
wind unshells me
ott and I scan
kyline we left
nd, the same city
ing itself
perpetuity,
ame cranes
ed over the horizon
ibs.

ehow the book shop was packed

tetris-tight with tomes and the pages
threatening to choke the room
from ceiling to floor. I perch
among the clutter behind the counter
while Nick swivels like a compass needle,
tucking Palahniuk back into his slot,
ringing up Baudelaire, chatting Marquez
with a student, the space pinballing
until Nick sweeps the last customer
out the door and cages the place up
to leave, and even the neuron tangle
of streets feels spacious by comparison.

21
A man stares through a fence,
his face a chainlink mirror in the dark.
Lauriston has already succumbed to 2am
so when I ask him what he’s looking for
he tells me. He is as lonely as a stone
in the sea, he skips his life briefly
across mine, and then he’s gone.

22
The streets are banked
with fleeced figures
at the Christmas market,
bobble-capped and neckless
under woolen mounds of scarves,
swollen as sheep in their winter coats.
They amble patiently
between the stalls,
mulled wine and bratwurst
steaming like censers
in mittened grips,
scant snow pounded to slush
he ferris wheel, I watch
rs in the rink swing
arms like angels,
bling nonetheless
e frozen ground.

necklace was a promise

ver, a hook sunk deep in the future.
iles casts the same spiny shadow
me as it did my grandpa,
ame steeple overlying the jewelers
coaxed metal into love,
hile time makes crowns of our bones.

ays leave the same way,

the clock repair shop
e dusty brass clappers split
raftsman’s reflection,
he alley with its shrines
uckfast bottles adorning the stairs,
ugh Potterrow and into the stew
udents sliced up
e occasional bicyclist,
us stops clogged
niformed kids. The route rolls
a rosary in my mind, lingers
he impression of my body
warm on the bed,
familiar voice
g when I’ll be back.
Burned sugar in the kitchen
and the lonely hum of empty home.

Night has filled the windows

entirely and left me a house

of black canvases. If I catch

my reflection she won't

have any answers, just a mouth twisted

by sour aftertaste. My act of faith

is turning on all the lights.

Circling the room like a moon.

A school dance with myself, awkward

and sweaty, bamboozled

by need. There is nothing

in my heart that won't stain

and if you really must press

your ear to it you'll have to bear with.

It’s a bibliography
of silent rooms.
e here adding
m to the window.
face gets rubied

stoplight; sun,
e brush the gray dusk
this near-morning.

me crack the window

ar the day squeal
a hurry.

car is moving
only in here
we talk like this,

e toss our hearts

cigarette butts
molder somewhere

Let’s not wonder

fires we caused.
Miles of scrub lined shoulder out my window, hazy grey against the
pavement
and fences stitching the fields cracked under a winter sun. Pink salt
lakes dotted
like blisters. The mountains puckered into the sky, shadow blotched
and pale
as dust in the afternoon light. We lunch beneath the lightning
charred fingers
of a gum grove where a blackened gash made a gate of a trunk. No
sound but the birds
splendidly tropical in the muted canopy. Sheets of rock jutting
around us, rusty walls
once a seabed now tearing skyward, punctuated with brush. A knot
of western greys
nose sedately through the grass across a dried riverbed. Back in the
car we rattle down
a gravel road sketching the endless Martian plain. The sun mottles
everything
gold until it sinks back into its cradle of purple peaks and it's just
our headlights
versus the red dirt clouds, the kangaroo bones, the unrelenting
empty dark.
 give it up you can’t speak
world into order

let the drunkard murder

lphabet break

ss

you are turning

ike a diamond
expecting yourself
in the gem gleam

hat if life
spills out like a burst pipe

you are wading

in a sea of mercy
Hold me like you would a fire,
your beard singed under the covers.
It’s winter and you will never own the cold.
Dark turns to heavy turns to quiet and your skin

is a chainlink fence to peer through,

my fingers laced in the gaps.
Am I the hearth or the conflagration?
I need to core your heart like an apple,
need to read it with my tongue.

You trail me faithfully as the moon.

We’re all afraid of setting love adrift,
glaciers peeling sheets into the sea,
a piece of you lost forever. This kiss
is breath on a windowpane.

Once, I would have lopped off all your hair

but when I go for good this time, I’ll leave
the shears untouched; we’ve taken
enough from each other.
ames Thompson

are bone and gone

us. Nothing endures

uneroded.
blacktop stings

ir with the singe of something

ed out. Summer is over;

t an exoskeleton
rown lawns and rotting fruit.

must have known death

preparing a chair for you

ven so, you let

o oblivious

or good.
makes an ocean of loneliness,

hore stretching beyond hope,

ou showed me how

mb the world for grace.

now the sun forms

den veil on a woman's throat,

d throws its joyous tone
the morning grows.
n of bone clefted

to crook around mine

in a stone prayer

to love with full hands

this ring grace me

The night doesn’t wait
to wring out the day’s blush.
It wraps us like damp sheets
while the streets shrink
to gasps of lamplight
and that’s what it’s like for me
sometimes. My words sluice
out in gutter flood; you catch
them, patiently waiting to wipe
the gravel from my heart and tuck
me back into myself.
You won’t let me fall
out of love with the world.
I will try to be the rose
that peels to the dawn.
Remind me to tell you
how nothing is ugly
in the sunset and the way
the sidewalk glitters back
at the evening’s first stars.
dug deep as bone
st you in me. You crook
nd my heart, skirt crumpled
ur navel, a raincloud

ascara smudged
ur eye. I was thinking
t that morning, when tongues
ght passed over the rug.

there are leaves

marking the pool and the sun
cking herself under the mountains.
e’s a halo. Veg in my bed a while.

done dragging the sky

n to meet me, want to fill your cup
love and toss the rest

summer gutter, ride off

rds a night that hasn’t forgotten
ay. Pour the morning
and slow. I am singing

song at once and you

ulling the melody from it.
The moon traces the ceiling
through my window, a ripple
against the glass; she’s paused
to swim in the pool.
Somewhere, flowers haunt the dark,
sweet and open-lipped as laughter.
Tonight I’m tired of love.
Tonight I want to be the moon
when she folds the sky around herself
like a cloak, I want to be a great pearl
punctuating the stars, carving
the heavens into a map even though
she knows where she’s going.
encouragement, motivation, and enthusiasm that my writing
group offered in abundance. Thanks to John, Jake, Rose, and
Rachel for getting it all off the ground, and to Jessie and Jen for
adding more great ideas and perspectives later on. I'll forever
cherish all your feedback and support, both on my writing and in
life.

I'm eternally grateful for the kindness that my friends and

colleagues showed me during the period when many of these
poems were composed. Thank you to Owen, Sara, Lyra, Cat,
Daniel, Kira, and Alexis for giving me your shoulders when I
needed them, showing me love in small, thoughtful gestures, and
frequently reminding me that laughter is the best medicine.

A special thank you to Nick, Scott, Sam, Zinet, Forbes, Jane,

Stuart, and of course, Grandpa Doug for making Scotland my
second home and a place I can always return to for comfort.

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the teachers and

mentors who encouraged my creativity over the years, in poetry
and beyond. Thank you to Mike Chasar, Scott Nadelson, Allison
Hobgood, Jenny Orr, and James and Martha Thompson.

Finally, thank you to my parents for instilling in me a love for art

and room to express myself. You pushed me to be my best but
always let me choose my own path.

earned her BA in Creative Writing at Willamette University, and her
master's in Design & Digital Media at the University of Edinburgh.
She currently resides in Silicon Valley.