Here is my (mostly accurate) running life list of my published writing—print and online—in descending chronological order of the year of publication. Sadly, a number of these journals, magazines, and websites are no longer publishing—the fate of so much literary these takes of screen supremacy over words. Still, gratitude to all the venues who continue to put the word out there. Even when the odds (and finances) are against success…
The Autumn 2025 “Burn It Down” issue of TrashLight has hit the streets. My poem, “Rewind,” appears along with many other voices in its eighty-plus pages of art, fiction, and poetry. All of this creativity is a call to action, to rise up and rage against the would-be fascist machine that threatens our country 24/7 these days. TrashLight Editor-in-Chief Jill Spinelli has these words to add to the conversation: “This issue is built from the broken screams for justice, the need to be seen, and the feral desire to fight back…
We joined the parade on Saturday afternoon in downtown Portland. The chickens and the turkey, the SpongeBob and Pokemon characters, the giraffes and cows and unicorns, the T-rexes and, of course, the frogs. All 40 or 50,000 of us with our homemade signs, with our bubble machines, drums, cowbells, streaming for miles, a crowd so dense we were able to fill two bridges cross the Willamette River and returning at the same time. Even if the front page of the New York Times continues to downplay these mass protest events
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Where there are free bouquets available for passersby on their way to and from Alberta Park. Where there are no fires that I can see, no conflagrations, no insurrectionists warring in the streets. Where the sun is out and it is a glorious autumn day iridescent with green, melodious with birdsong, peaceful and calm and serene. And since I know that the tyrants are lying and gaslighting about what is currently going on here—in the city where I live—makes a person wonder why one would ever take anything they utter at face value let alone assume it is telling the truth
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I took the above photograph at the No Kings Rally and March in downtown Portland, Oregon on June 14, 2025. It was one of my favorite signs at the march—after all, we are avid community gardeners! I had previously seen it at the April 5, 2025 Hands Off Rally but did not get a good photograph at the time. It sums up so much about this moment we find ourselves in. Luckily, IHRAM Press and its authors and artists are fighting back. I am one of those authors. As of today, October 1st, IHRAM Press is publishing America’s Slide Towards Authoritarianism, a folio of American and international writers and artists…
This past Monday marked the passage from summer into autumn—a day of balance between light and dark—even though most of these late September days are still cloudless and warm. Tomatoes continue to ripen on the vine. Assorted flowers are in riotous late-season bloom. In spite of the growing menace—and very real harms—flowing 24/7 from the unhinged actions of too many
My poem, “Rewind, or One More Reminder of Our Long and Ongoing History of Ochlocracy”, has been accepted for publication in the Fall 2025 “Burn It Down” Issue of TrashLight Press. This poem is included in my yet-unpublished chapbook, Postcards of the Hanging. Many of the poems in this manuscript—including this one—were informed by the newspaper articles and editorials collected in 100 Years of Lynching by Ralph Ginzburg, first published in 1962 and re-released by the Black Classic Press in 1988
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A few months back, I entered the Fall 2025 Adult Contest of the Oregon Poetry Association. One of the categories this time was called Extended Prompt. The rules were one page and one poem maximum in any form following the prompt, “Turning Point.” The judge, Richard Tillinghast, provided some additional guidance: “Write a poem about a turning point in your life, a landmark event or life-choice. Something—
good or bad—has happened that changes everything.”
This afternoon we made our annual pilgrimage to Canby, Oregon—an hour or so south of Portland near the Willamette River—to see the forty-plus acres of dahlias in peak bloom at Swan Island Dahlias. Every August and September, they open their fields to visitors—there are food carts, music, fresh-cut bouquets, and general festivities all around for the attendees. Sunday afternoon was no exception as we lucked into a performance by the Salem-area blues band, Hank Shreve…
I have been thinking lately about the myriad ways one can construct a poem in multiple parts. I did exactly that when I wrote Great Hunger, my multi-part poem investigating the intersection of landscape and place as it relates to one ecological and humanitarian disaster, the mid-19th century Irish potato famine that was published by Anchor & Plume Press in Baton Rouge, Louisiana…
Two of my poems “A Baffling Earth” and “It Ends, It Begins: A Cento” are now online in the lovely September 2025 edition of the literary magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs. The theme of this issue is “Muse” in honor of their twentieth anniversary. In modern usage, a muse is a person who serves as a source of artistic inspiration. Recently, I did a number of poems that are “in conversation” with Emily Dickinson and her work; I guess that makes her my 21st century muse. And the cento form itself is a bit of collage/homage to the voices of other poets who inspired me as well. …
