It’s a bit like a date with an almost-married woman, but instead of staring at me awkwardly across a table while I mumble about bands from the nineties, poetic construction, old dead languages, and Sappho fragments, I can write these things down, and you never have to personally deal with my violent moods. I would be endlessly appreciative of your support. Taking the donut.

Buy me a coffee, here.

A list of recommended readings from The Poetry Question and me.

Five Books of Poetry

Black Bough Poetry Reader’s Choice Award 2019, Black Bough Issue 3: Yolk, In a Sentimental Mood

Best of the Net Nominated Piece: Corvid Queen, Halcyon

Best of the Net & Rhysling Award Nominated Piece: Riddled with Arrows, Relic

Diablo Valley College Literary Contest; First Place; Fiction: DVC Inquirer Treat

Diablo Valley College Literary Contest; Second Place; Poetry: This piece was published in Susurrus Magazine (through SCC) in 2015. 

When We Lost (on Soundcloud)

Diablo Valley College Literary Contest; Honorable Mention; Poetry:

Why are you Dashing my Dreams on the Cruel Rocks of Reality (On Soundcloud)

I feel so much gratitude to Corvid Queen Magazine for nominating my poem, ‘Halcyon’ for Best of the Net.

Read ‘Halcyon’ here

the wind just lifted the branches outside my sliver of window. my heart is broken. the most brilliant beautiful woman i have ever known just died. 

branches. roots.

She-of-constant
bloom-filled kitchen
enfolds, says

you’re lucky

when I tell her I am
studying what she is

living. Bulbs

crinkle at the ends. She
flips from bluebright

surprise. Feathers near
translucent in her delicate
lap rest, inactive.

Her chin yields a fine
crop of protective hairs

I want to reach out

to trace along this
furry slope I have

memorized since
opening my first

book. Reaching pulp.
Scrabble board. Soft
boiled egg. Two

porcelain pigs
on this kitchen
shelf above her boughs.

These wounds used to
thrive, discover, fingerpaint.

I crumble to stars as she pats
my knee. Stops.
Stares at the wall

behind me. Art
has flown; her instructive
smile is replaced by

a lack. Her spark

no longer aflame; the chill
has come and she has fallen
from her branch.

 

The Art of Self-Proclaimed Solitude, Branches. Roots.

Headline Poetry and Press, book review, Forging through the Flame: A Review of Bola Opaleke’s “Skeleton of a Ruined Song”

Headline Poetry and Press, Robot Love Song: An Opera (An accident).

Feminine Collective, Lavender

Rhythm & Bones Press, Growing

Twist in Time Mag, Recall Has Become An Affliction

Fevers of  the Mind Press: Avalanches in Poetry, His Woman Is Free; I Have Tried In My Way

The Wild Word, A Meme for the Winged; Woman Wreathed in Seaweed

Black Bough Issue 3: Yolk, In a Sentimental Mood

The Ekphrastic Review, La Belle Captive

Chanterelle’s Notebook, Striking Room; The Dwelling Tree; Maladora

Dusk and Shiver Magazine, Psyche Sound-Bathes on the Summer Solstice

The Ekphrastic Review, The Ransom

Neon Mariposa, Complete / Static; Doctor Says

Taco Bell Quarterly, Sappho at the Drive-Thru; o Taco!

Cauldron Anthology, Ceres Invokes Famine

Feminine Collective, Brísingamen

Nine Muses, The End of the World as the End of Tranquility

Nightingale and Sparrow, Portents

Corvid Queen, Halcyon

Black Bough, Self

Riddled with Arrows, Relic

Mojave Heart Review, Star String, Wind

Ghost City Review,  Watching Your Love Bloom

Iron Horse Literary Review, Two Hymns

Burning House Press, We Make Our Instruments; No Chicken

Door-Is-A-Jar, Bread and Love

Peculiars Magazine, I Know I Have to Take These Pills; Nesting : Boiling

Feminine Collective, Sounding

Rhythm & Bones Lit: Dark Matter, Sun Feast

Isacoustic, Misophonia

Eunoia Review, Stretch; She; Walnut; The Love Letter

Moonchild Magazine, Corn

Quiet Storm, Mass

Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Post Radio

Panoply, Pregnancy Pantoum

Whatever Keeps the Lights On Magazine, The Distance to Apple, Plastic Containment of Brown-Sugar Oatmeal, Green Tea

The Daily Californian, Death Before Birth

DVC Inquirer, Treat

Solidarity Blog, I Know I Have to Take These Pills; Nesting: Boiling

 

Nine Muses Poetry was kind to share my ekphrastic response to their monthly poetry challenge. This is in response to [The Tuft of Grass, Albrecht Dürer, c. 1514]

The End of the World as the End of Tranquility