I am originally from Springfield, Ohio, and currently live in London, Ohio. I write poetry to make sense of the world and my place in it.  I have been fortunate to have my work accepted for publication in several print and online magazines.  

Making Wages


Give credit to those who ruin everything
they touch, that we might know the beauty

of ruin.  It's where we are going.
The largest pile of rubble is your friend.

Hung over, the birds go cockamamie
in the morning, chit and chatter their way

into the channels and sleepy hollows of the skull.
Soon I'll be off to the plant again, where

robots sizzle and spark, missing every
coffee break.  The laundromats hum toss and

rumble, and every paycheck's a dollar short.
In college all I wanted to study was literature

and art.  "What are ya gonna do with that,"
the marketing majors asked.  After years in the

factories I guess they had a point.  They're still
scheming for a living, and I'm still writing it out.

But under the scars of the heart remains an un-
tainted river.  I'll work my shift and drive ten miles,

so deep in thought I won't remember the ride.
I'll be star-blinded and bent-beamed, learner

of fence-posts and path-rocks, dreamer of moss,
stamina of iron.  Steam is money, stars are time.

-first appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly