Poems
A handful of my poems have found homes in journals and anthologies, a civic art project or two, and elsewhere. Here are a few to read, watch, or play.
some promise
In One, an online journal published by Jacar Press
day jobs and courage
My homage to the people who show up for open mic. Not just the performers, but the audience too.
watching home movies of my lover at 17
In Triggerfish Critical Review, Fall 2018
brownfield heart
With original music by my friend Doc Hutchings, one of many treasures I’ve found at open mic
stone’s throw
Whatever you’ve lost, it’s only as far away as your memory.
a flatlander explains big sky
If you grew up in Oklahoma or a similar landscape, you know that what is made visible by the flatness of that landscape can take your breath. Just like good sex.
lots
“I’m an old tart and you come late and I have loyalties scattered over the landscape like lots I bought and pay taxes on still…”
~Marge Piercy, The Inquisition.
traveler’s blessing
In Redheaded Stepchild, a home for rejected poems
a flatlander visits the beach
As a mind imprinted in childhood by life in a landlocked state, the ocean has never struck me as anything all that great.
a flatlander falls in love
The landscape of Oklahoma (where I grew up) and the weather that often rolls in fast and loud make a handy metaphor for many things.
For Beryl Markham
“…this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers.”
~Ernest Hemingway
open letter to anyone writing about love
In Connotation Press, an online artifact
sister pine
“Part of the mythos of the Chosen One…is that they must be alone.”
~Aliette de Bodard
he said he’d have to think about it
…and we both knew what that meant.
not another cat poem
When my 17-year-old cat died, I knew that the world did not need—well, not from me at least—another cat poem. So I didn’t write one.
getaway
A duet with my erstwhile open mic co-host, Benjamin Molini, who travels light.
this camera refuses to take pictures of overphotographed locations
In Rat’s Ass Review, an online journal that publishes what it likes. You know what they don’t give.