I’m pleased to announce that my poem “Waiting for the Call” is live at River and South Review. Many thanks to managing editor Alexandra Thomas and the River and South Review team for taking this piece, another in my series of hendecasyllabic poems.
A recording of my poem, “Moon Cows,” is featured at Shō Poetry Journal via a link. Many thanks to editors Johnny Cordova and Dominique Ahkong for making this available.
I am thrilled to report that my prose poem “Metastases” has been nominated for a Best of the Net award by Does It Have Pockets. I am grateful to editor Camille Griep and her team for publishing and nominating this piece.
Somehow, I missed this, but in late April my poem “These Upright Nights” was published by Broadkill Review. Thank you, Jamie Brown, for accepting this poem, which is another of my hendecasyllabic series.
My poems “Scrambled Eggs” and “Side Effect” are live at issue two of The Calendula Review: A Journal of Narrative Medicine at CNU College of Health Sciences. I am grateful to the editorial team for taking these pieces, which are from a series of hendecasyllabic poems (eleven-line poems, each line of which consists of eleven syllables) begun last fall.
I am thrilled that Does It Have Pockets has published three of my recent prose poems, “Metastases,” “A Patient Noose,” and “Everywhere But Here.” I am grateful to editor Camille Griep for making space for these poems.
I am thrilled that Indianapolis Review has published two of my recent poems, “The Over/Under” and “Bargaining.” I am grateful to editor Natalie Solmer for taking these poems.
Feeling Squeezed at the Grocery Store I Conclude that the Propensity to Ignore Pain is Not Necessarily Virtuous, but Continue Shopping and Gather the Ingredients for Ham Fried Rice because That’s What I Cook When My Wife is Out-of-Town and I’m Not in the Mood for Italian, and Dammit I’m Not Ill, Merely a Little Inconvenienced, and Hey, in the 70’s I Played Football in Texas, and When the Going Gets Tough…
I answer work email in the checkout line. Drive home, take two aspirin.
Place perishables in refrigerator. Consider collapsing in bed. Call wife.
Let in dog. Drive to ER, park. Provide phone numbers. Inhale. Exhale.
Repeat. Accept fate and morphine. Ask for lights and sirens, imagine the
seas parting. On the table, consider fissures and cold air, windows and
hagfish. Calculate arm-length, distance and time. Expect one insertion,
receive another. Dissonance in perception, in reality. Turn head when
asked. Try reciting Kinnell’s “The Bear.” Try again, silently this time.
Give up. Attempt “Ozymandias.” Think of dark highways. Wonder about
the femoral, when and how they’ll remove my jeans. Shiver uncontrollably.
The events in this poem took place nine years ago. A lifetime ago.
Bread
That year we learned the true language of fear.
I baked boule and you haunted medical sites.
You said to arrive I must first depart
or be willing to suffer self-awareness. Let’s not
mention our pact just yet. My basic boule requires a
Dutch oven, 20 ounces of flour, water, yeast and salt.
At twenty I learned the finer points
of sausage-making, how to butcher chicken, and
that your hair smelled like dawn’s last flower.
Back then we owned the night. Now I harvest
wild yeast and sharpen pencils, make to-do lists,
pour Chianti, run numbers. I agreed
to your proposal. It would be a kindness, you said.
The pancreas produces hormones
and aids digestion. I chopped off my left thumbtip
and a year later the abscission point
still felt numb. After rolling the dough
into a ball, let it proof for an hour in an oiled bowl.
We shared a taste for sharp cheese
but never agreed on pillows. You loved
down comforters and found vultures fascinating.
Years together honed our lives
but we never considered what that meant. Score
the dough, bake it for 30 minutes with the lid on,
remove the lid and bake for another 15.
Kneading resembles breathing: in,
out. Rise, fall. Bright lights made your eyes water,
so I kept them dimmed. You swallowed
and said “Tell me how to knead bread.”
With the heel of your right hand, push down
and forward, applying steady pressure.
The dough should move under your hand.
Within minutes it will transform.
* * *
“Bread” was first published in Extract(s) in April 2015.
The Gift
What lasts longer than ink
or stone or a pond’s ripple?
I want to give you
the deepest green.
Memory circles back,
highways turn
to dirt, the dead blossom
in children’s voices.
Place this carnation in a vase.
Swallow these pills.
Don’t move, don’t speak.
Let me do this.
“The Gift” was first published in Brave Voices in January 2019.Many thanks to Audrey Bowers and her editorial staff for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 