Daniel is a world-traveling writer originally from Anchorage, Alaska. He is currently based in Canada, getting an MFA in poetry. His writing focuses on relationship to place and experiences opened by place. Daniel has been published in or is forthcoming in publications around the world, including, Beyond Words, Hot Pot, Blood and Bourbon, and many others. 

CAUGHT IN BUYBACK RIP TIDES

Find the Amtrak back to Manhattan 
lights off. Allowing the skyline to 
illuminate the car, uninterrupted.
Bar with a forgotten name across 
from the 72nd street station on 
the Q line. Dressed down to a dive,
prices of somewhere worth a damn. 
Cracked vinyl barstools, yellowed 
interior revealing age through valleys 
of spilt maroon. Bound to kill 
a back, the way nowhere could 
at the start of a decade that disappeared 
in story, chapters exchanged with strangers. 
Listen to voices compete with a melody  
about wrapping arms around a memory,
by a rarely remembered guitarist, outside 
these worn rooms. Get caught 
in conversation to hold you 
there. Order with experience born 
after years of complicating simple 
things. Tip like you’re earning 
the way you used to. Impress 
a bartender for a chance
at a buyback. Watch the jade 
front door disguised in weathered 
layers of stickers swing away 
the evening. Waves of humid air 
crash against glasses half full 
of Makers Mark 46, maraschino  
cherry hiding under ice. Lay in the back 
booth big enough for eight, close eyes 
to keep yourself from wandering 
to anywhere outside the skyline 
ever again. 

HOLIDAY PARTY

Can’t understand how to handle you 
when we come back into each other’s lives
during cold, summer’s ambition fades, we’re left 
to figure out, how to make it through dying months. 

Crisis merge to similar miles 
of left romances in distant cities,
careers as stagnant as Baltimore’s air,
time for planning escapes passed 
wait till spring to try again. 

Half a room apart, dozen feet,
feels like the stories we put between 
now and last year, close gap 
through glimpses and grins, 
half smile I welcome too regularly.

Keep up through conjecture 
and rumor, way you do 
with assumption, could break 
everything false, with anything 
I’d believe without demand for promise. 

When we make it beyond midnight, 
pretend this time, we can stop 
being each other’s favorite 
endless broken goodbye.

HOURS AHEAD OF YESTERDAY

Can count the number of words 
I’ve said to anyone this week 
on one hand, slightly more 
than the week before. 

Please speak to me in our tone, 
neutral and flat, vowels hardly expressed, 
clearly from the states, hard to tell exact 
direction of your voice, close enough to home. 

Lock us away, in a per-night apartment 
high above the festival of Leith Row, 
sidewalks of slow Scottish drinkers, 
cigarette ash breeze drifting towards the North Sea. 

Tightly lock windows
to put street chatter to bed, 
we’ll find a way to deal 
with trapped June evening heat. 

Point of wanderlust not carried home, 
sense of direction lost between 
too many train station dinners 
and terminal coffees without warning. 

Allow me to test a rusted voice, 
hold a tired chin to keep awake 
in hours fitting Edinburgh 
nine ahead of yesterday. 

Create somewhere we’ll sleep to stay, 
dream to settle like everyone else 
wake to know, we’re kidding ourselves,
we’ll stay defined by places we leave.