Featured Poems
You Can Stay In A Place Too Long
Even our homes tire of us—
the once-bold area rugs,
red madder root patterns bleeding
from light they lay in
year after year, tread upon and admired
in equal measure. Dirt ground into tile
seals secrets like kisses, like passion
flowers in the overgrown yard
we debrided like a wound, suturing
a new landscape when our hands flew in and out
of pots, when no heat could make us stop,
until we just gave up. Frayed edges
fill familiar rooms—
in each corner, a context
begs forgiveness, justifies
those times we dug into our digs
before the walls closed in
and off, like power
flipped. We weren’t at fault for wanting
envelopes in which to hide, to live,
make work our life, make love
to last forever. We were blameless believing
occupations could belie transience.
We were blips. We know this now.
If the Fragment is the Story
then the letter Arnold sent my mother in the ’80s
was nothing more, nothing less than his script
on letterhead, reminding her of their bond
as classmates at Miami High, where once
is always, everyone heeds each other, melting
in time, and along those lines, he has friends in high places–
a certain Senator if you want to know–
who’d be happy to help her find work
if she needs it, before, in closing, Arnold says
whenever he thinks of girls from back then,
it is she who comes to mind
as the sweetest—one he has never forgotten—
but there is no blatant invitation, never does he say
he’s married, ask if she’s happy or how many children
and when I look for traces of him
elsewhere in her hope chest, he is nowhere
in her yearbooks; not a single note from him
appears alongside other scrawled goodbyes, good lucks
nor is he listed with the smiling others
in the photo of the kindergarten play,
no clipped obituary, or evidence of her reply
but on the jagged edge of a leaf torn from an album,
I imagine Arnold there professed his love
before a jealous ex wiped clean my mother’s memory
for suitors, her nostalgia for pure desire—
left Arnold unfulfilled and buried in the cedar
with our baby clothes, in the margins,
holding secrets we were never meant to know.
Other Poems
- “A Conversation With and Without My Mother Approaching MIA” is pending in Asheville Poetry Review.
- “Emergence” is pending in (Cumberland River Review)
- “Refuge” is pending publication (in Sugar House Review)
- “It’s Common for Alzheimer’s Patients to Reach for a Word” (in Redivider, 2022
- “Lionfish Hunter” (in Stirring; A Literary Collection)
- “Space Invaders” and “Everywhere We Once Knew Wildness” (Zone 3, 2022)
- “If the Fragment is the Story” was a finalist in River Heron Review’s 2022 Poetry Prize Contest and appeared Aug. 1 in the journal’s contest issue.
- “The Chickadees Are All Up In Their Feelings” (in the Atlanta Review, 2022)
- “All My Father’s Heroes” (in The Worcester Review, 2022)
- “Survival Guide” was a finalist in the 2022 Sweet Literary Poetry Prize Competition and was published in the journal’s contest issue (2022)
- “Intimates” (Pacifica, 2022)
- “The Brazilian Peppertrees” (Twelve Mile Review, 2022)
- “Daylight Savings” (in Twelve Mile Review, 2023)
- “The Attraction to Niagara” (Split Rock Review, 2022)
- “Relative Risk” (Aquifer/Florida Review, 2022)
- “In the Hollow” (Sweet Literary, 2021)
- “You Can Stay in a Place Too Long” (Rust and Moth, 2021)
- “The Great Egret” (Five Points, 2021)
- “The Beach House Offers an Elegy” — Pushcart nominated, (Whale Road Review, 2021)
- “When Blood Flow to the Heart Slows, Stops’ (SWWIM Every Day, 2021)
- “What You Called Your Mother Came to Me”; “After the Fall”; “Reunion”; “Reverse Universe”; “Speaking of God”; “Viral” and “All the Dog Couldn’t Tell Me of Desire” were all published in UCity Review in its Noteworthy Poet feature (2020)
- “Weightless” (Atlanta Review, 2020)
- “Geography” (Stirring: A Literary Collection, 2020)
- “Meanwhile, America is Losing its Memory” (Broad River Review,2020)
- “Watching the Waning Gibbous Moon” (Yemassee, 2020)
- “Recovery” (Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, 2020)
- “Consistency” (Frontier Poetry 2019)
- “What’s Left of Us is Shaken” — Pushcart nominated, (Split Rock Review, 2019)
- “A Purse is a Mother is my Birthright”, first honorable mention recipient in SWWIM Every Day’s Purses for Poetry Contest, (SWWIM Every Day, 2019)
- “An Ordinary Life”, Pushcart-nominated by Concrete Wolf Press from my collection, Accommodations was a finalist in Atticus Review’s 2019 Poetry Contest (Atticus Review 2019)
- “At Rhine Falls”, “We Gather in Florida to Celebrate My Father’s Life”, “Alyeska at Our Midnight”, and “Ice-out”(Alaska Women Speak , 2019 and 2020)
- “A Pileated Woodpecker Shares Where to Find God” SWWIM Every Day (2019)
- Personal Cure for Consumption” (South Florida Poetry Journal: Poets Respond to the Prompt section ,2019)
- “What I Tell My Children When They Ask Me Where I Come From” (Glass Poetry Journal 2019)
- “Coming Home” (Barrow Street 2019)
- “What We Carry” (Palette Poetry, 2018)
- “Personal Effects”, Pushcart-nominated by Concrete Wolf Press, (Potomac Review, 2018)
- “Exploring Roots in the Hair Salon” (Glass Poetry Journal, 2018)
- “Mary Is No Longer Working For The Company” (South Florida Poetry Journal , 2018)
- “Royal Palms Defend Their Place in the Condo Universe” (Gravel Magazine, 2018)
- “Before Landfall” (SWWIM Every Day, 2018)
- “Paris Voices” (Valparaiso Poetry Review , 2018)
- “The Changed Landscape” (The Christian Century , 2018)
- “Our Last House” (Barrow Street, 2018)
- “Imprinted” and “Questions for the Plumber During Remodeling” (UCity Review,2017)
- “Making Soda Focaccia the Day of the Muslim Ban” (Rise Up Review,2017)
- “Exotic Taste” (Superstition Review , 2016)
- “When Memory Goes From the Hands” (Gyroscope Review, 2016)
- “Temple Grandin Charms the Academics” (Gyroscope Review,2016)
- “Card to Kim” (Arsenic Lobster, 2016)
- “Identity Theft” (Amaryllis, 2016)
- “Sinkhole” (The Carolina Quarterly,2013)
- “Grandmother’s Will” (Cottonwood 2009)
- “Upheaval” (Portland Review 2007)
- “Nutritional Value” (Rattle (2006)
- “My First Steps” was a finalist in a poetry contest sponsored by So to Speak (2004)
- “Letters Home” (Rock Salt Plum Review, 2004)
- “After Dark” (Concho River Review,2003)
- “The Opal Box” (Hogtown Creek Review, 2002)
- “What Comes Out” (South Dakota Review,2002)
- “As If The Wish Were Flawed” (South Dakota Review,2002)
- “Climbers” and “Settlement” (The Cape Rock, 2002)
- “The Heart Contracts” (Bogg,2002)
- “Breath” (Tule Review, 2000)
- “Light and Shadow” (Prolog, 1996)
- “First Day of Hurricane Season” (Tampa Tribune, 1991)
- “The Service” (Black Buzzard Review, 1990)
- “Dressmaker” (Tampa Bay Review, 1990)
- “Discovery” (Unknowns, 1984)
- “Pillows” Encore, (1983) and North of Wakulla, an anthology from Anhinga Press (1990)
- “Final Draw” (Florida Review, 1981)