Featured Poems
Refuge
Sixty-seven species nest on the Bear River refuge:
American avocets, black-necked stilts
by the thousands spike dikes and roads
we wind on our way back
to the hotel, wilted from dry heat, wetlands,
imagine bird calls heard/
unheard from across a wilderness of seen/
unseen migrations, droughts—
a land of shrinking lakes to which they all return,
nestlings and the species left
alone to fend against the wildfires
of a burning age. Though we missed the tundra
swans this trip, a small regret,
we tell ourselves our mothers did their jobs
for here we are, a nested pair,
flown decades married through the motions
of layovers, stops and starts, our settled life
to which we turn and turn again,
despite imprinted restlessness, free-falling
as the great Salt Lake evaporates.
— in Sugar House Review
Summer 2023
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
- “Bearings”, Split Rock Review, pending (2025)
- “Anchorage” (Glass Poetry Journal, pending (2025)
- “A Southern Black Racer Plays Dead in the Dollarweed” (Stirring: A Literary Collection, 2025)
- “Another Day’s Inventory” and “Wyeth’s Women” (Body Literature, 2024)
- “Abditive” (Cider Press Review, 2024)
- “Orienteering” (Palette Poetry, 2024)
- “Friesian Story” (Radar, 2024). Hear me read it! PUSHCART NOMINATED
- “Pendulum” (South Dakota Review, 2024)
- “Avian Inventory” and “Riding Lessons” (Louisiana Literature, 2024)
- “Evidence” (Kestrel, 2024)
- “Tahane Recalls His Escape” (Sweet Literary Review, 2024). Hear me read it! PUSHCART NOMINATED
- “The Rose Bush” (Anacapa Review, 2023)
- “Proof” (Atlanta Review, 2023)
- “The Trees in Dealey Plaza Seemed Distressed” (in ASP Bulletin, 2023)
- “Fault Line” (San Pedro River Review, 2023)
- “When Time Ran Out, I Took the Clock In” (trampset, 2023)
- “Refuge” (Sugar House Review, 2023)
- “What We Read About Ukraine Makes Us Dream of Burning” in Gulf Coast Review, 2023)
- “Lacuna” (Valparaiso Poetry Review, 2023)
- “The Grief Committee” (Bear Review, 2023)
- “Flyover (Asheville Poetry Review, 2023)
- “Emergence” (Cumberland River Review, 2023)
- “Lionfish Hunter” (Stirring: A Literary Collection, 2023)
- “It’s Common for Alzheimer’s Patients to Reach for a Word” (Redivider, 2022)
- “Monuments,” “What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt You,” “All You Can Fit in a Suitcase” and “In Florence, In the Summer of ’69” (One Art, 2022)
- “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 Our Feelings” (Atlanta Review, 2022)
- “All My Father’s Heroes” (The Worcester Review, 2022)
- “Survival Guide” was a finalist in the 2022 Sweet Literary Review 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” (Twelve Mile Review, 2023)
- “The Attraction to Niagara” (Split Rock Review, 2022)
- “Relative Risk” (Aquifer/Florida Review, 2022)
- “In the Hollow” (Sweet Literary Review, 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” (Whale Road Review, 2021) PUSHCART NOMINATED
- “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” (Split Rock Review, 2019) PUSHCART NOMINATED
- “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)