Dearest readers, I love you.

Over the last 30 days, folks from these countries have read my writing. 

You encourage me to keep going, and I love you. 

Savannah Dusk

Now is the hour

when cypress trees dim into shadows. 

 

The river is lingering along the bank

in puddles caught among braided roots. 

Ageless sky deepens, wavelets go still,

the water seems to slow and fall silent.

 

This is the ceremony of sinking dusk— 

when our reflections turn dark and 

dim blues fade in the calm of night.  

Yasou! A Celebration of Life, July 2020

Arise

Sometimes

she’s still afraid

blood-lava waves will

suffocate her shadow wraith,

 

but says the sanctified will surely rise

through the dark, through a window in the sky,

cloaked in divine wind that blows the cloud curtains

across the pearl of Heaven’s floor, opening fortress doors.

Amethyst Review, January 2018

Banshee

Her follicles have slowed releasing

auburn and gold into their pale straws.

Warmth dissipates from her hair.

 

Sungrazing comets flame

their brightest before death—

all glow with no dying flicker.

 

Gusts wail the valley out back.

Claws rip tangles, scalp mind.

In her sleep a barn owl shrieks. 

 

Wet strands circle the drain.

Ashen threads drip fingers,

stick to walls, wrap toes.

 

Still she brushes her hair on the porch,

sheds and renews for spring’s nesting lark

who will cushion her hatch by instinct.

Poppy Road Review, August 2022

You Still Walk Among Us

You came from the hand of God. 

With your name, your Momma  

gave you your crown of glory

and dedicated you back to Heaven.

 

Like her, you were a poet and painter.

And even when you walked the earth, 

you saw things not of this world, 

held them in your eye, then let them fly away.  

 

You talked to the spirits in the churchyard mist. 

Now you drift among them, mourning for us.

We mourn for ourselves, 

for the living left behind. 

 

Will you show up this spring in the cardinals?

in dimes on the sidewalk like your Dad 

used to send you from Heaven?

 

Remind us your spirit cannot be buried. 

Leave us dimes. Glow in them for us,

wearing your princess crown. 

Lothlorien Poetry Journal, May 2023

Five-Thirty

When brakes all light up at red lights, 

most drivers seem to go for their phones                                  

and scroll to touch the outside world,                    

while some just get lost in their palms.  

 

The impulse to scan the devices in hand

just fills the moment with foolishness— 

for where the mind makes its residence,

there the heart will also live.

 

Watch sunset sky spread dusk above us

in fire-winged shadows of dying day.

See the tidal blues wash up the horizon

as night is reflected in oceans of space.  

 

Here under the city’s blessing of stars,

I’m headed to get my son from practice.

I cap my pen when the light turns green—

excited to show him the seed of this poem.  

Live Nude Poems, August 2021

 

Stitches

Sense

You trace a ridge on my fingertip,

sloping hillcrest to trench,

your breath resting calm in the valley.  

 

Inside tide lines, you comb the beach, 

seeking what the sea casts up— 

larimar and peridot, seaheart seeds, 

ammonites once feeding the giants.

 

For you fit with me, you fill me in, 

settling your prints into mine.  

Ariel Chart, April 2019

Apex

Then we crossed Beringia,

tracking mastodon with our teeth

and whittling its bones into arrows. 

 

Now we brush desert from skulls,

bodies we hollowed, ribs where we hid  

to keep our lineage alive.  

 

And still to oar forward our survival                                          

we hack meat off skeletons,

undressing animals down to their spirits. 

 

The sand is full of oceans of bone,

now we dig it up like scavengers. 

Piker Press, April 2022

Birth Family

You were born into us.

You were who we were for just a minute.

 

A boy for my brothers, another to wrestle.

You made them tiny uncles.

 

A doll for my sister. She scrawled out times 

I contracted that Fall—she was nine.

 

And I still have the paper in her third grade writing

timing contractions from a clock that was ticking too fast. 

 

I went to the hospital with you.

After two days I left without you

since our time together was over. . .

 

because you couldn’t be ours. You were born for another.    

Beloved child, said your adoption announcement.

 

In the only photo of you and my father,

his foggy glasses slipped down his nose.

 

My mother. My mother, she held you first,

and a piece of her soul has guarded you since.

 

Six a.m., your eighteenth birthday:

I found my face in yours in a Myspace search.

And you thanked me for birthing you, though a child myself,  

and for proving we love you more than ourselves.  

 

 

Constellations, December 2012

 

 

 

Transcend

She smokes in bed now when undisturbed 

by disowned hair coiled like snakes in her 

sheets, dusted with skin off her legs, or by 

ashes like cremation in her blanket ripples.  

 

How chill her calm, resting well in a mess, 

igniting a quick death or inhaling it slowly.  

Mad Swirl, February 2025

Pray She Saves You

You have been told

a harlot is a deep ditch, 

a dangerous pit.

 

She is a cave of spirits

awaiting judgement,

a tomb under a foundation stone.  

 

When the priests enter 

the holy of holies,

they cannot hear the wailing souls.

 

You have been told

avoid the trap of women.

Death is in their blood and breath.

 

It’s been said god lives in incense 

and the steam of slaughter. 

From the mercy seat, he sees.

  

But you are lost 

in the tabernacle curtains

and its overlapping veils.

 

When you hide from him

in a closet of wire and winter coats,

pray she saves you.

 

Beg her to send you 

the vacuum chord to guide you out. 

Rejoice, she can find you in the dark.

 

She is the cave of spirits

and the mercy seat. 

She breathes the breath of life.  

Synchronized Chaos, December 2024

 

 

Boothwyn

Sears sent boxes of her grandparents’ new    

home up the tracks from Dover, Delaware.  

Men dug a hole, cemented its sides against 

bugs and dirt.  New wood bored in the wall 

made cellar steps—still stable now as three 

generations later she surfaces into the living 

 

room, warm basket in arms, lasagna in oven, 

their first awaking from his nap.  When he’s 

fresh in his high chair and green beans steam 

on Grandmom’s range—as pulses go rushing, 

the porch door hinges will soon whistle open:

Tom always knows his heart belongs at home. 

 

Unbroken Journal, January 2016

Snow Frozen

Mother, you sent me red-hooded and skinny, tasked

with gifts for your own Mother. In my basket

I carry apple bread under a gingham napkin.

 

Snow clothes the trees, their arms hold the forest.

I climb bridges of branch carcasses. Wood resting

awaits when billbugs and larva awake in their nests.

 

Holly limbs burst in a berry flush.

Your eggs have all cracked, streaming viscous and hushed.

Mother, I’ve lost the path—

trunk patterns changed in last spring’s seedling rush.

 

Where the hill seeps away from the roots of an oak  

I’ll hide from the wolves in the cheek of my cloak.  

Poppy Road Review, June 2019

Visit

The stream in my backyard is filled with stars among the slick rocks,

overflowing from the swollen pond above it. 

 

Under the lid of midnight you emerge through the trees 

like you appear sometimes in my dreams.

 

But we’ve breathed this night into existence. 

We run, race to hold back advancing time, 

wrapping ourselves in an afghan, 

skin to skin in the wind through the curtains at the window—

until the fading night fizzles 

into the climbing horizon of soft light. 

 

You left once. You’ll leave again.

I’ll come down to the kitchen tomorrow, 

your smell on my neck from our dawn parting, 

and begin again my routine until you return. 

 

I am wasting away the life in me, 

watching for you against the back window, 

carrying the exhaustion of this cycle: you leave, I rally on, 

and the stream keeps running into the earth.

 

Susurrus, December 2022

Garage Sale

She first named her daughters when they lived 

in her dolls, Jessica, Susanna, Isabella—kissing

each before sleep, holding them all to her chest 

when she prayed sleepy prayers into her pillow.

 

Facing the wall one summer night, she relaxed her 

grip in the lullaby of her breath.  Dad snuck in and

pried those little ones from her protective curl then

distracted her with errands the following morning.  

 

She sobbed when she discovered Mom sold off her

babies.  And yet only five, with arms full of empty,

she knew even then they’d never come home again.  

 

Though all spirits need mothers, some mothers lack 

daughters and sleep to seek them from their dreams

where she and her three adventured the air by quilt 

soaring over grass and across the moon’s wide eye.  

                                                                                    

While she grew, their doll bones remained small.

So she sent their memories back to Heaven, their

souls released to rest beside their Father, Creator. 

                        

She’s blessed now with three precious sons but still 

mourns her unbirthed daughters—reaching for them 

as lonely winds come breathing through her fingers. 

 

Defuncted, September 2022

 

 

Daydream for Travis

His flexors conquered his extensors so soon.

His shoulders fold together, he holds himself in.

This hugging himself is what he does best.

When I pull his damp shirts from the washer,

I imagine cleaning that blankness off his precious face.

If I had the power I would carry him to the backyard in a basket,

untwist him, then clothespin him as a giggling child to the line.

The wind's seedling wings would parachute around him—

the sun pressing through his sleeves in waves of golden morning.

Then I’d move down the row, unrolling his wet socks,

humming to the taps of his flapping cotton.

If I could free his arms to sway and stir. . .

If he could kick and swing in all that air and light. . .

The washer is empty. The dryer's rumbling now.

So I climb the dark stairs to reposition his stiff little body in his chair.

Journal of the American Medical Association, June 2009

Penelope Waits for Her Wandering Lover

Penelope is weaving
in her towering hall.
She’s refuged up there in her loyalty.

Waiting for Odysseus,
she unwinds her youth,
and fashions it into his shrouding lace.

Her dark eyes cloud under sunlit lashes,
she feels again his fingers’
last brush against her hers.

Her spool flows thread,
like years untwisting,
like days she pours into remembering.

One day she’ll arrive at the end of her fibers,
all wasted passing time
till he wanders home.

Pank, April 2009

Dream Shift

I’m back from taking our two to their schools, 

the house is ours and quiet. 

 

It’s mid-morning.

Seems the world has already left for work,

so the neighborhood is mine

and the day is ripe for the busiest among us.

 

He’s already sleeping calm in the room

after finishing his shift at the ER. 

I’m grateful he got home safe.

 

I don’t resist kissing his forehead,

tucking more autumn comforter around him,

for he’s all soft breath and flannel—

my sweet husband.

 

Bed is recovery for his body, 

where he labors to regrow his soul 

after holding death so often in his arms

and sitting with those who seek out prayer.  

 

I have things to do, but he lures me in.

So I slide down beside him, 

wishing dreams upon his stillness

to blanket our hibernation.

 

 

Bearings Online, September 2021

Eighth Grade

                                                                                                            

We were empty-eyed cinderblocks,

ringed keys unlocking the doorknobs.

Among junior high’s sleepy congregation, 

an audience of our class’s generation,

only some of us showed up praised and amen-ed.

School taught me typing for college essays 

and gave me chances to run away. 

We’d flood from the school at 3:05—

but only some return now for mid-life toasts.

Just listen up for the morning announcement:

we cannot know life while it lives so close.  

Dream Noir, April 2019

.

Fall Out of Line

The neighbors mind. To eye her, 

they alternate spiraling the lighthouse,

all their anchors moored at the coast,

more oars approaching from the river fork. 

They part the drapes when she passes, 

crucifixes pulling at their throats.  

And unchaining their frustrations,

they hold her crimes always in mind,             

then spit at her likeness they posted all over—

from their cellars to their inner eyes.

They dream of opening her with all their saws, 

lugging buckets to collect her flow to the sea. 

And lusting, they try to torch her with prayer,

their hair fire-blown like unholy tongues.

But she stands in truths that hold her safe,

and they turn on each other to lie in wait. 

Feminine Collective, July 2019


.

Sworn

Your bones once oared an ocean, son,

then you were lured away and born.

I relinquished you, chose it, sworn and recorded.

There is joy for some, while others mourn.  

You are your parents’ orange orchard, 

their garden of corn, an ordained reward.

For though they birthed their first two kids,

they lost them before you were born.

We’re all fighting storms inside us.

I knew I couldn’t calm our waves,

so your parents brought you home to harbor.

It hurt me hard to let you go. Hurt got us here:

behind some front door, I was broken by four, 

a ward of the walls, begging breath from the floor. 

Still glory keeps gathering in the east. 

The mornings form as joy-birds soar. 

I left you alone to explore your own sea.

You sought instead the origin of ocean—

and grown now, you often row back to me.  

Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, April 2018

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