Chapbooks
How Far is the Moon? (unpublished)
Great Greats (unpublished)
On a Road (Finishing Line Press, 2019)
Where We’re Going Isn’t a Place (unpublished)
Full-Length Book
Beyond That Hill I Gather (Finishing Line Press, 2021)
Journal Publications
Lo-ball, PANK, Off Channel, The Squaw Valley Review, Terrain.org, Mercury Retrograde, Crack the Spine, OccuPoetry, Sparkle +Blink, Picaroon, The Offbeat, Ursa Minor, Poydras Review, Waving Hands Review, Summerset Review, Visitant, Voices de la Luna
• • •
Poems
Three poems from Beyond That Hill I Gather
Published in Visitant, April, May, June 2020
Links:
Muriel Spark
Patti Smith (Lost Objects)
Joan Rivers
• • •
From Beyond That Hill I Gather
Also published in the Poydras Review blog, August 2019:
“A Posterity Conceived and Born of Conscious Love”
—Margaret Sanger
god she said is not a baker
she knew very well the answer
say what you mean she was told
and she started here but went round the world
she told them she told them good
desperate the crowded house
would have it how long it took how far
to China for lunch Germany for chemicals
Ireland for drear she came back to a league
that wanted itself and needed themselves a waistline
she left for the clinic the clinic
lines to the corner crammed with how
with howling babies how many their ages
name address married or single
couldn’t keep up she was thrown around
but kept her fingertips to herself felt the skin
tried to remember her father’s face he said
the shape of the head reveals a person
and in the end she was the delicate of
a husband just the idea of it a comfort she was
dangling over space someone found her and helped her up
gave her a swat on the bottom sent her home
not a very long time something
not in mind yet something she would do
bending the knees can help follow these steps
will it be rhythm continence or pessaries jellies
and case histories and raids and the head
of the policewoman’s bureau and husbands on the roof
the advancement of science civilized discoveries secrets
of life and all the while something so visible so obvious
just allow it just show them how is all
• • •
From Where We’re Going Isn’t a Place
Also published in Summerset Review, Summer 2020:
Wander Woman
“I’ll want a clawfoot tub.”
Sister chattered on.
Snuck Twinkies crinkling in bed.
Mom stopped practicing, poked her head in.
“Stop that.”
“And beads in the doorway!”
In high school, Mom said,
“Understand what the piano is saying.
Get with the programmatic.”
Mom said Mom said Mom said.
shesaidshesaidshesaidshesaid
Sister thinks the piano doesn’t mean what it says.
She grew up, wants an art class.
Teach ’em a thingertwo.
Or a rhubarb suburb
pick your own
vase on the mantel
showers instead of baths
marry some man, drink martinis.
If marriage isn’t the thing, boyfriends
girlfriends. Invest in show dogs.
Or pet kittens
fingers through the cages.
Who’ll feed them?
Egypt is the place.
Trip to Cairo, high-rises, Giza triangles
—or Elvis’s Memphis. I bet he could get a piano
to mean something.
I don’t know, maybe I’ll
get gigs singing or
open a saloon or a
can of tuna.
• • •
From Beyond That Hill I Gather
Also published in Waving Hands Review, Issue 11, 2019
Billie Holiday
Rat-a-matter faster
to drum up a compassion that he
did not know
those early senti-mellifluous bursts
such pretty snares.
Framer her
gardenia loop
tells the sing-song sing-along
first moment she to mother
maid in Baltimore.
Be close to a man and did everything she could to stop her.
This must have been
in the middle of May.
• • •
From On a Road
Also published in Sparkle + Blink, #99, May 2019
Stopover
snored up to eighty
snuck
through the gas station
wheels linger now
what’s regular ordinary
the air
so sweet at dusk
we stare ahead
at the stop
sitstill
she doesn’t know what to say
goes right on reading as if words are the wilderness