Runner-Up 2024 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry.

"It felt god-like / to consume something squirming / and alive; as if I were born / for drinking."

I Drink Rivers

"the honking grows like an chorus of annoying angels /
and no matter how many locks I’ve forged /
it's always the same; the clowns burst in"


Lucid Dreaming as Therapy

"I’ve come to understand that the god of accidents /will gladly strip someone of their innocence / as quickly and cruelly as any god of intention"

The Many gods Who Rule Me

"Mischievous copper wish / formed with a whisper, tossed silently down the well / mistakenly believing it had been freed"

Wish Coin

"The crisp paper slips spun like deadly silk / beneath the soft sky, each one a small act /
of flimsy fate and tethered tradition"

The Death Lottery

"Can you replace the sky with your chest /
the sun with your lips, the wind with your hands?"

Agoraphobia

I bought every ouija board in the city, learned /
Latin, bloodletting by leach

Unhaunted

"I always hoped I would die / on vacation, inside a science museum / or at least a starter home"

Accepting My Haunted House

"Grab the knife. Hold it above God like an ugly halo."

10 Step Guide to Killing God and Eating His Holy Corpse

"An embrace that turned me into Atlas, and you / Into the world"


Phantom Hugger

"providing rest / For our werewolves, a holy day of obligation / For all things nocturnal"

Finally Appreciating the New Moon

"Look how your body transformed into a throat / Your roots into tongues and your blossoms into fists"

The Very First Venus Flytrap

"I want to die full of you, teeth at my neck / Lips on every bruise"

Only a Lover Knows How to Eat You

"So what if I force-fed parts of myself / To those who could not love me"

Being a Bad Bisexual

"At night I'm chored with sharpening knives / Until they whisper my name"

An Abraham and Isaac Redux

"Who said small town folks like us couldn't fly? We did it / Basement and all"

The Great Missouri Tornado of 1882

"happiness pursued / Me liked a deranged killer"

An Exorcism of Happiness

"It asks for tiny sacrifices in return / And really which god doesn't?"

Prayers to the Shower Drain

"You look good / With your slit throat, your broken jaws and elbows"

The Morning After Battle

"We throw your body through the portal / And honestly we’re hoping you’ll somehow let us know / What’s happening on the other side."

Dante Novario

Selected work