His work will or has appeared in The Moon City Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Unavoidable Disaster, Contemporary Haibun Online, Thimble Literary Magazine, Poetry Flash,The New Southerner, Pegasus, Antique Children, The Smoking Poet, The Dispatch LitaReview, The American Mythville Review, The Licking River Review, Inscape, and on semantikon.com. He is the author of two poetry collections, several chapbooks, a collection of short stories, and a novella. He’s organized open mics and readings all over the Midwest. He publishes new work often on Instagram (@dirtysacred).  He is also  the host and producer of the travel story podcast, Record of a Well-Worn Pair of Travel Boots. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky where he fails spectacularly at gardening.

she waters the trees

we hole up in the bedroom against the heat
& find our selves as the new season attacks

unwilling to behave like proper prey
insisting over the garden she waters the trees

in defense of oxygen while the dogs make more methane
among the honeysuckle vines

between hunting for rabbits to friend
chasing squirrels & downing birds

careful to avoid the droopy ones

last year we told one another nature was coming for us
some vendetta for smog, taking the impersonal personal

or worse

not taking it at all & playing pretend
like ants angry after the boot smashes the ant hill

on a Tuesday

the entire house exhales relieved
this Tuesday morning like any other maybe 
music playing the dogs napping full-bellied

i have been told i mention them too much
the hounds 3 but there are days weeks
like this very not abnormal Tuesday 

when it feels we are locked together 

the futile war against tumbleweed shedded fur
too big for the vacuum cleaner 
resentment "accidents" in the library should i leave for too long

& the cat's endless manipulations

there are mornings, like this very breathable Tuesday in June 
when it crosses my mind to question 

who is herding who &
which reality exactly i woke up into or
if i'm still dreaming or

if the coffee just isn't ready yet

Here until last call

anyway. May as well record the numbers, too.
Not making it more real doesn't make it not real.
It does no good not to hear. At last call
we all end up digging into our pockets

searching our drunk memory for those
lost numbers to old girlfriends and ex-wives,
one-night stands who hated being our last call
before stumbling somewhere alone

with all our numbers -- too
many to keep track of really.
But writing them makes them real
and since I'm here anyway, might as well

til the end of last call may the weight,
may these numbers not be too heavy
that we forget their names like all those failed connections

at last call.