Poems new and old
I have a new prose poem/essay about birding at Farm posted at the Advanced Leisure site.
It's called "Hunt and Peck" and you can read it by following this link:
https://www.advancedleisure.com/lifestyleanddesignarticles/hunt-peck
Admirals Club. Dad going through a USA Today. Cup of coffee going lukewarm in front of me. I just sped through a sudoku and it didn't blow up. The chair I'm in is leather, comfortable. Thoughts of the dog are stressing me; have been since before I left the house. I'll feel much better when my wife returns to the house tonight, back from a trip of her own; lets me know everything is alright. Also, rain today. Gray day, Gray Davis. Remember him? Total recall. The e-mail that never was. Unknown sender, no subject, blank body, unsigned. A friend is to let the dog out mid-day but problems with the front-door-knob plague me like a vice. Is the roof keeping out the rain? I rain onto paper, letting everything out. Grip on my temples easing. Hoping there aren't any leaks; nothing I can do about them now. American Airlines, AMR. Flying in the rain. My father went to use the computer. When he's back he'll tell me if the market's up or down.
I have a poem called "One Road" published in the most recent edition of a northern Michigan literary journal called Dunes Review.
If you are interested, you can buy a copy of the Dunes Review in which this poem appears by following this link which is for the website of an independent bookstore in Traverse City, MI:
https://www.horizonbooks.com/book/9781950744220
The specific volume is Dunes Review 28.2: Fall/Winter 2024. It has a wintery lake scene depicted on the front with some driftwood or branches in the foreground. I wish to thank the editors of Dunes Review, Teresa and Jennifer, for including my work in the journal.
I've had a poem posted online at the website of a poetry journal called Sheila-Na-Gig. The poem is titled "3 AM Eternal." You can see the winter edition of Sheila-Na-Gig Online posted here. This link will take you to a series of headshots and you can either find my photo or my name. Click on the photo and it will take you to the poem. Thanks for reading and thanks to the Editors at Sheila-Na-Gig for giving my poetry a place to be seen and to be heard.
A poem I wrote earlier this year has been posted at the Libre Lit website. Thanks to Mary B for accepting my work for publication and for posting it on Libre. You can click here to read "The Same Illness."
https://www.librelit.com/themagazine/the-same-illness
It helps to think of it as a city. The beginning
Of a city, a little town blooming loud around you.
You’re in the middle of it, side-central flower.
There are creeks that run with the sound of
Crying babies. This is perfectly normal.
This is how cities are made—first with eggs
On a fervent bed of moss. Purple moss,
Why not. Becomes purple gutter, your neighbor
Waving hello, he sees you as part of the
Landscaping, the living city. There is applause for
The show just getting out. Bow. Take a bow,
On your deck, the sun is shining, a bus rolls
By, one of the many odorless buses, to
The next city, from the last one, the way storm drains
Drain. It’s all taken care of. The baseball team has
A star pitcher, from this town, from next door. He
Would have been you, you could have been him.
Glove on, ball coming in, caught, reach into
The glove, pull out the ball and read the name on it.
It’s the name of this town, the town you made,
That grew up all around you, so quietly you didn’t
Even notice.
This poem originally ran in the seventh edition of the Under Review in the winter of 2023. You can see the poem as it appears on their site here. I thank them for recognizing my work. You can see the list of my other published work here.
I’m no good for stock tips,
and I’m lacking of ladder.
But I love the half-acre
blanket I’ll sleep on tonight,
bee’s clover soft like
sunlight beneath.
Cloud sandwich,
thin blue meat of sky.
No salida. Por supuesto.
Necesito construir la presa.
The reservoir, the dam.
At the end of the avenue, the river
goes underground, becomes
the aquifer that filled a million years ago.
I promise I’ll sip slowly.
This poem originally appeared in the Red Rock Review. It was printed in their Fall 2022 issue, which does not appear to be available for purchase. But you can see a digital copy here. I thank them for publishing this poem.
I. Intro: getting there
II. Other trip expenses, so far:
III. Bird notes
IV. We did what we did when we did it
V. Firmament
VI. Scrub notes
VII. Brittlebush and the voice of a bird
VIII. A room in the desert
IX. Birdsong notes
X. It left when we rained
Find me at the fairgrounds, it's as good a place as any, in whichever county you may seat. Quilt-mart. Family-style catfish. Steel, brown, breaking. Stave, stave off. Hot week, water down, the sun is stronger than we think. Strong corn, striped grass, green green.
Cosign for sonic coins. This is where we got run off the road last time, remember? Walk the river, find the seam, undo the enigma. Tapes in storage, do they still speak? The smell of gold I know only from a dream. Rusted rocking horse moving oil along the line. Flat Kansas, open air. Raw emotion, sudden ocean, pay dirt mining away...
Four walls
of the finest material
quarry the
neverending attention
of river rock along the
thousand edge
of the road
The weight of the land
is that of a bird
a wing among clouds
a path in the valley
between the large, red eggs
When we graduated
from the mining of gold
into ownership of the best flints
there was eventually a battle
Not listed, a battle.
Don’t say, a battle.
It was a sweet death
in that stone beloved,
uniformed with the kiss
of a clean shadow
Like how a tooth
together with
another tooth
becomes the jaw
of the land
***This poem initially appeared in the second issue of Horned Things Journal, which you can find here.
JBR.com 