I am not a natural with all this digital photography. I generally like/prefer/privilege physical media—paper books, LPs, CDs, DVDs, printed photographs. But hell, the damn iPhone camera is (even when it is not the latest version) an awesome tool and I use it regularly and widely to record my adventures rambling through the days called living this life…
…
My poem, “Juneteenth,” was published in Scissors & Spackle, Vol., 3: Laundry Lines: An Anthology, way back in September 2013. At the time, it took its title from Ralph Ellison’s second novel, Juneteenth; in the decade since, Juneteenth has (finally) been recognized as a National Holiday! My poem is about a very different subject, however—a vignette from June 19, 1977 when I was a very new, very young mother…
…
My poem, “Caesura,” was published by Stirring way back in November 2011. A caesura is a poetic term-of-art that describes “a stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary…
And even the mottled, somewhat raggedy witch hazel leaves become a yellow luminescence against the afternoon and its celebration of sky-blue sky. A day to walk, observe, look up, celebrate the riot of color of the so many neighborhood shrubs and trees. A day to rake more fallen browning leaves, to sweep, to wait for the finches and bushtits to arrive for their before dinner dip
…
My disturbingly prescient poem, “Peak Oil Comes Hither,” was published as the final part of my triptych, “Distant Early Warnings,” at PANK back in January 2012. It was written in flexible form called the triversen, shorthand for triple verse sentence. Each sentence is broken into three lines
…
Pilgrimage Magazine published “Bird, Flown,” my short poem influenced by Federico García Lorca in the Beginnings and Flight double issue of their print journal way back in Fall 2015…
In July 2021, during the ongoing days of the COVID nightmare, a group of us, under the direction of artist extraordinaire Jenny Joyce painted a mural on the side of our garage that faces the alley. I had seen and admired one a few blocks away in the alley that leads to the chickens all of us were so happy to feed during the early days of the pandemic. …
This afternoon, I learned that two of my poems, “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “The Green Love of the Progress to This Now and,” have been accepted for publication in Thriving, an anthology forthcoming from Exsolutas Press in 2024. According to its website, Exsolutas Press was founded to publish books “that pry open dead questions and give birth to new ones…
It seems to happen every autumn. For some reason—the shortened day length, the return of the rain, the cooler temperatures—I suddenly get the urge to blow money here and there entering what are likely long-shot poetry contests.
It has been several days since we went to see Killers of the Flower Moon at the historic Hollywood Theater where the big screen did justice to the gorgeous sweep of Oklahoma landscapes as well as the film’s more intimate, human moments. I am still reflecting on this latest film from Martin Scorsese and his top-of-their game film-making team…
