My poems “Gruyere,” “Mushrooms I Have Known” and “Chipotle” are up at Nthanda Review, an online literary magazine out of Mawali. This marks the first publication for each, although they’ve all appeared on the blog before. I’m grateful to the editors for taking these pieces.
Thunder
The low rumble says “look out, I’m coming,” but never specifies what to anticipate. Lightning strikes? Floods? High winds? Sometimes even the rain neglects us. Our pup hides under a blanket in her crate, and I contemplate a run to the store for beer and wine. Three years ago tornados were spotted in this area; they never touched our hills. The storm’s downdrafts bring us the fragrance of ozone. I marvel that three oxygen atoms combined in the atmosphere to produce such delight. How I remember inhaling deep draughts of summer storms in my childhood’s last years, watching thunderheads roll overhead, dreaming of victories and love and certainty, not yet knowing that desires change, that the unexpected always seizes its turn.
Under this roof
we smile at the clouds
our kettle whistling
“Thunder” first appeared in The Zen Space in July 2018.
Deadfall
Clouds capture the moon.
The shifting branch cracks,
as if shedding thought.
I add words to the kindling, a few notes.
The tune flares against the wall.
Though I hum, no one hears.
Night muffles our song.
Abandoned, the flame reaches out.
“Deadfall” first appeared at Red Eft Review in June 2018. Thanks to editor Corey D. Cook for taking this piece.
My poem “To the Vase Whose Emptiness Beckons” has been published at Cirrus Poetry Review. I am grateful to editor Hannah Norman for taking this piece.
My poem “A Further Response from the Hornet’s Nest,” which somehow won first prize in Panoply’s first-ever contest, has been published in Issue 11 along with poems by such luminaries as Stephanie L. Harper, Kelli Allen, and AM Roselli. I’m thrilled to have a poem in this issue!
My last five posts of 2019 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.
Pain
Pain reminds me that I’m breathing, still able to appreciate the fragrance of French roast coffee brewing, the diced red pepper, onion and jalapeño mixture sizzling in the pan. Today is a good day. When I roll out the dough for the onion tart, the leg barely protests, and as I sip ginger tea while the tart bakes, no throb interrupts my pleasure.
Sometimes the hip shocks me with its barbed lance attack, or the knee rasps “not today, sonny,” and I grimace, concentrate on deliberate forward movement, one short step followed by another, into the kitchen or down the steps to the shack.
Music soothes, as does poetry, but occasionally the weight of the guitar is more than the leg can bear. Still, when I manage to lose myself in a tune or a few phrases, I drift in their currents, weightless, free.
Oh, to climb that hill
among those lost maples
Look — my shoe’s untied
* * *
“Pain” first appeared in The Zen Space in July 2018.
My poem “Inscrutable” has been published in Volume 3, Issue 1 of Ink in Thirds. Thank you, Grace Black, for taking this piece!
My poem “Self-Portrait as Wave” has been published in the first issue of Kissing Dynamite. Many thanks to editor Christine Taylor for taking this piece.
My last five posts of 2018 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year. “Wind” benefitted from being featured on the WordPress Discover site, and is by far the most viewed post ever on the blog.
Wind
That it shudders through
and presages an untimely end,
that it transforms the night’s
body and leaves us
breathless and wanting,
petals strewn about,
messenger and message in one,
corporeal hosts entwined,
that it moves, that it blends,
that it withdraws and returns without
remorse, without forethought, that it
increases, expands, subtracts,
renders, imposes and releases
in one quick breath, saying
I cannot feel but I touch,
I cannot feel
* * *
“Wind” first appeared in Blue Hour Magazine and is included in my first chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
My last five posts of 2018 are reruns of five of the most viewed posts on this site during the year.
Thirty-Five Years Later, I Raise My Hand
In spring 1983 I enrolled in a poetry writing course thinking it might help improve my short fiction. I was a history major by default, had never taken a course in poetry, but believed, with absolutely no evidence, that I could write fiction. At the time I would have been hard-pressed to name five contemporary poets, even counting my professor. To be honest, the class struggled to hold my attention. Only about a quarter of the students seemed interested in writing, and the instructor was a bit, uh, tired. But for the first time in my life I read, really read, poetry. I fell in love with Galway Kinnell, Ai, James Wright and Carolyn Forche, to name just a few of my early enthusiasms. I wanted to write like them. So I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Most of it was laughably bad, but somehow I managed to win an undergraduate poetry contest, which suggested that hope existed. Maybe someday, I thought, one of my poems will be published. This radical idea had never occurred to me before. Publication seemed to be the privilege of special people, and a lifetime of gathered fact revealed that I was unequivocably nothing special.
Early on in the semester, perhaps even in the first class, the professor asked how many of us thought we’d still be writing poetry in twenty years. I didn’t raise my hand. I didn’t know where I’d be in six months, much less what I’d be doing in twenty years. Since I’d realized late in the game that teaching was not for me, I had no job prospects, and few marketable skills, despite experience in chugging beer, manning sound-powered phones on a ship’s helicopter tower, scraping barnacles and bending rules. The world was limited. The world was limitless.
Another gray day
dividing the old and young
Oh, this aching hip!
A song from that time:
O at the Edges 