November
Reluctantly a turquoise sky
tumbles gray into winter,
a courtyard fountain
surrenders its purpose,
hopes for tomorrow adopt
the ill-fitting clothing
and dusty manners
of previous frosts;
words slither uncomfortably
translucent,
as both my skin
and its translation
rise
vapor
from a frozen river
touched momentarily
by her sun.
But like a prayer
remembered,
still my mouth holds
unkissed
a long note
not to wake yet,
not yet, please,
not quite yet.
(previously published by Verdad)
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
2011 Heart Poetry Award winner!
Wonderful news!
My poem "Icelandic Church" just received the 2011 Heart Poetry Award from Nostalgia Press.
The award includes $500 and publication in Nostalgia Press' Fall 2011 print publication. I would like to thank both Connie Martin, the editor, and Brenda Kay Ledford, award judge, for their support, commitment, and passion!
Nostalgia Press also accepted another of my award entries, "Motionless From the Iron Bridge", for publication in that issue.
My poem "Icelandic Church" just received the 2011 Heart Poetry Award from Nostalgia Press.
The award includes $500 and publication in Nostalgia Press' Fall 2011 print publication. I would like to thank both Connie Martin, the editor, and Brenda Kay Ledford, award judge, for their support, commitment, and passion!
Nostalgia Press also accepted another of my award entries, "Motionless From the Iron Bridge", for publication in that issue.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Two acceptances today!
A wonderful beginning to a beautiful Saturday in Portland! I just received word today of new acceptances for my work in two literary journals.
Scribble, a wonderful print journal out of Baltimore, will be publishing my poem Equinox in an upcoming issue. Equinox has been previously published with Blue Moon Literary and Art Review.
Connotation Press, an online publication of poetry, prose, audio, and visual arts, has also accepted my newer love poem Plumage for an upcoming issue. Plumage is part of an ongoing chapbook idea involving mixed media in conversation with each other.
Scribble, a wonderful print journal out of Baltimore, will be publishing my poem Equinox in an upcoming issue. Equinox has been previously published with Blue Moon Literary and Art Review.
Connotation Press, an online publication of poetry, prose, audio, and visual arts, has also accepted my newer love poem Plumage for an upcoming issue. Plumage is part of an ongoing chapbook idea involving mixed media in conversation with each other.
Willows Wept Review
Issue 10: Winter 2011 of Willows Wept Review is now available, which includes my short poem Winter.
Click here to read!
Click here to read!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Come join us!
Open Reading at Verse in Person
Tomorrow Night
Wednesday January 26, 6:30 - 8 PM
NW Branch Multnomah County Library
23rd & NW Thurman
Old hand or young blood, bring your poems to the NW Library Wednesday night, when Melissa Sillitoe hosts an open reading from 6:30 to 8 PM. Come early to sign up, take to the podium and share some poems. Time will be allocated depending on number of readers.
Everyone who reads will be eligible for a drawing for a $20 gift certificate at Powell’s books.
Tomorrow Night
Wednesday January 26, 6:30 - 8 PM
NW Branch Multnomah County Library
23rd & NW Thurman
Old hand or young blood, bring your poems to the NW Library Wednesday night, when Melissa Sillitoe hosts an open reading from 6:30 to 8 PM. Come early to sign up, take to the podium and share some poems. Time will be allocated depending on number of readers.
Everyone who reads will be eligible for a drawing for a $20 gift certificate at Powell’s books.
Munyori Review
The Munyori Review has accepted and today published 5 of my older travel poems: A Village South of the River, Hymn Similar to Yesterday’s, Rails West, Baltic Covenant, and Aegean Melancholy. All but Rails West were composed in Europe about 4 years ago, and I'm glad they've finally found a home...
Click HERE to read them!
Click HERE to read them!
Monday, January 24, 2011
This Week's Poem
Psalm One
Everything hoisted distant into cloud and sun
and mythologized in the stars we harvest
must be alive
must be truth
must cast a little of ourselves
down upon us
so there will be something left of light
to recognize.
(published by Ellipsis)
Everything hoisted distant into cloud and sun
and mythologized in the stars we harvest
must be alive
must be truth
must cast a little of ourselves
down upon us
so there will be something left of light
to recognize.
(published by Ellipsis)
Sunday, January 23, 2011
New issue of Rosebud out now!
The new Winter issue of Rosebud is out now! It includes my poem "White Space", which in some ways details my process of composing poetry- part of my poetry philosophy: that the reader plays an active part in composing each poem through their unique and inimitable interpretation.
Copies are available for purchase at their site.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Word Salad
Volume XVI of Word Salad is now published online. This issue includes two of my older poems: Two Rivers and The Titans.
Click here to read them!
Click here to read them!
Friday, January 21, 2011
Grey Sparrow Press
Grey Sparrow Press has just accepted three of my new poems for publication an in upcoming issue of their online (and annually printed) journal.
The Eroding Hourglass, Communion, and Procession are each part of my chapbook The Elaborate Hour, presently submitted to contests and publishers.
Grey Sparrow has won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals’ [CELJ] Best New Journal Award. CELJ’s distinguished judges said, “We’re impressed by the journal’s multimedia and interdisciplinary focus; its bridging of the gap between academia and the arts; the felicity of its design; and the international scope of its coverage. In a time when the print journal is thought to be in danger from economic and technological forces, Grey Sparrow has shown there is still room for innovation and excellence in the traditional journal mode.”
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
This Week's Poem
Lullaby of the Spider
Those only alive
circulating through your veins
pull from the moonlight
a single gold thread-
call it a memory
they can no longer keep
or a ribbon
banding this strange gift.
Down from the ceiling
that to your eyes,
still milky blue and ablur,
could be any distance overhead.
What is it that dangles
from the thread
they pull from the moonlight
down upon your cradle?
You play it like a game,
reach for its silver belly
and reflective black eyes,
curiously, without fear.
And perhaps you are right.
Sometimes poison
is its own medicine.
-published in Red Wheelbarrow
Those only alive
circulating through your veins
pull from the moonlight
a single gold thread-
call it a memory
they can no longer keep
or a ribbon
banding this strange gift.
Down from the ceiling
that to your eyes,
still milky blue and ablur,
could be any distance overhead.
What is it that dangles
from the thread
they pull from the moonlight
down upon your cradle?
You play it like a game,
reach for its silver belly
and reflective black eyes,
curiously, without fear.
And perhaps you are right.
Sometimes poison
is its own medicine.
-published in Red Wheelbarrow
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Figures of Speech Reading and Open Mic- Wm. Stafford Event
Figures of Speech reading series this month will be at 100th Monkey Studio (110 SE 16th Ave, Portland) from 7-9pm.
Hosted by Steve Williams and Constance Hall. Sponsored by OSPA.
Featuring Cindy Williams-Gutierrez, Dave Jarecki, and Leah Stenson.
Bring poems inspired by/in tribute to William Stafford.
Come join us!
Hosted by Steve Williams and Constance Hall. Sponsored by OSPA.
Featuring Cindy Williams-Gutierrez, Dave Jarecki, and Leah Stenson.
Bring poems inspired by/in tribute to William Stafford.
Come join us!
Monday, January 10, 2011
This Week's Poem
Distant Vacation
Of all industry- the gutted refinery, sagging like a body
unused, that still cries from the ceiling
last month’s rain.
Step outside, into winter, and the Northern
Lights spume alien green, distend, pressed
between the two glass slides-
endless night and its soil. Why the distance
of words like alien? What is being enlarged,
investigated, the illnesses in our blood.
White cells, too low. Something
of the unknowable elicits a promise
that it resides in us too, that foreign
tricks of light are our tongues,
that a fishery rotted still stands
because someone someday will replaster the ceiling.
It is too dark to recognize as more than shadow
the unpenned horses and mangy wads of sheep above.
But something must exist to cast them
forty feet long down the white hill.
The pigeons cling desperately to the village steeple.
The unmanned ships in the harbor still prowl for fish.
-published in Arlington Literary Journal
Of all industry- the gutted refinery, sagging like a body
unused, that still cries from the ceiling
last month’s rain.
Step outside, into winter, and the Northern
Lights spume alien green, distend, pressed
between the two glass slides-
endless night and its soil. Why the distance
of words like alien? What is being enlarged,
investigated, the illnesses in our blood.
White cells, too low. Something
of the unknowable elicits a promise
that it resides in us too, that foreign
tricks of light are our tongues,
that a fishery rotted still stands
because someone someday will replaster the ceiling.
It is too dark to recognize as more than shadow
the unpenned horses and mangy wads of sheep above.
But something must exist to cast them
forty feet long down the white hill.
The pigeons cling desperately to the village steeple.
The unmanned ships in the harbor still prowl for fish.
-published in Arlington Literary Journal
Saturday, January 8, 2011
O Sweet Flowery Roses
The online poetry journal O Sweet Flowery Roses has just published two of my poems on their site. "I'm Not Sure to Which" and "What is Light", both poems in different so far unpublished chapbooks, are now available with Roses.
Click HERE to read them!
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Stonehenge Studios open mic
The Studio Series: Poetry Reading and Open Mic will feature VOX: A Spoken Word Chorus, directed by Eric Hull, at Stonehenge Studios/Ross Island Café, 3508 SW Corbett Avenue , Portland 97239 on Sunday, January 9, 2011 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. In celebration of William Stafford’s birthday month, VOX will perform poetry by Stafford and audience members are invited to share his poems at the open mic. Free and open to the public, the Studio Series is held monthly on second Sundays. For additional information please contact host and organizer Leah Stenson at leahstenson@comcast.net.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Now Culture out now!
The new issue of Now Culture is now out, which includes my poem Answering Where. Click HERE to read the issue!
The poem has been significantly revised since its acceptance in order to let it fit better in my presently-submitted chapbook, The House We Live In, but you can see the original, extended version in this issue.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Cirque- Issue 3 out now!
Issue 3 of Cirque is out now! Read the online version HERE. The print version should be out soon...
This issue contains my poem "Sleepless Harbor".
Monday, January 3, 2011
This Week's Poem
A Kind of Loss
The lake tires of lake
and begins reflecting tree.
Her eyes shake free their calm azure.
That black dress worn often in age
tonight upon her delicate frame
compares less to night.
*
Walking these evenings
along the familiar banks of the river.
I’ve fallen in love with Autumn’s namelessness,
the unvoiced bridge
between swim and skate,
clothes morphing colors,
flesh morphing colors,
street signs rusting off single letters,
and in the letters remaining
a temporary city
winding into silent rooms,
shutters groaning like the faces of old coins.
*
Yellow strands threaded through night.
All those sleep shapes
chipping away the wallpaper
flaking to the wet carpet
of this rented Prague flat,
where little squares of sky over brick
translate streetlights and blindfolded cathedrals
a sorrow
originally shaken as love from the clouds-
too distant and temporary
to protect their meaning.
-published by White Whale Review
The lake tires of lake
and begins reflecting tree.
Her eyes shake free their calm azure.
That black dress worn often in age
tonight upon her delicate frame
compares less to night.
*
Walking these evenings
along the familiar banks of the river.
I’ve fallen in love with Autumn’s namelessness,
the unvoiced bridge
between swim and skate,
clothes morphing colors,
flesh morphing colors,
street signs rusting off single letters,
and in the letters remaining
a temporary city
winding into silent rooms,
shutters groaning like the faces of old coins.
*
Yellow strands threaded through night.
All those sleep shapes
chipping away the wallpaper
flaking to the wet carpet
of this rented Prague flat,
where little squares of sky over brick
translate streetlights and blindfolded cathedrals
a sorrow
originally shaken as love from the clouds-
too distant and temporary
to protect their meaning.
-published by White Whale Review
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