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Adios, Uncle Bill
Uncle Bill—A Feisty Soul October 22, 1929 – November 13, 2010 Equinox at the Rainbow Hill Ranch* for Bill and Betty Matted in early light, the grassuncurls around the ankles of the cows:damp smoke. The barn’s still dark, walls wet; the sodden beams creakin rootless sleep; and sharpenedby the cold, a fragrance of cut hay broods over the clank of an iron bell.Only those fruit-laden trees, bentlow, seem buoyant. I can almost hear the round earth whispering its storyto the seeds . . . feel the seasonholding its breath to listen. ______________________*From House of Mirrors.Read More
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For Veterans Day
News Cycle Gashed gut. Howls. Boots full of blood.Fitful close-ups of the latest righteous warsting our eyes—smoke from the funeral pyresburning forever toward the end of The Iliad.Read More
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BOO! (A Poem for Children)
RUNAWAY JOHN John, the willful skeleton,escaped from his tomb and away did run. Clatter-rattle, chatter-rattle, click, clack, click—he ran until his joints felt sick. He wobbled along as the moon rolled downlike an apple of snow beyond the town. Clack-click, rattle-clatter, CRASH! John fellagainst the wall of a dried-up well and scattered into the grass. Then dayfilled the wood in its whispery way: dew-hush, lark-twitter, shadowy boughs;a wind poured over the bony brow, and out from the skull a low sound came—a note as hollow as poor John’s name. Hoot-sound, flute-sound, drifting the breeze,reached only flowers, stones and trees.Read More
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Mark Your Calendar…
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New Poets of the American West
Click here for a PDF flyer I’m completely thrilled to have three poems of mine included in New Poets of the American West, a huge (550-page) anthology of poets (250-plus) from eleven western states, edited by Lowell Jaeger and beautifully produced by Many Voices Press. The breadth and depth of this book is frankly amazing, and it’s a privilege to be part of it.Read More
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Of Poems and Gremlins
Just a note that my poem “Field Notes Concerning the Bomb” was a finalist for the 2009 Consequence Prize in Poetry and appears in the magazine’s 2010 issue.Read More
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Enjoying the Mystery
I make no particular claims for the poem below. It suffers from several flaws, at least two fatal to its poetic worth. But I thought of it the other day, for some reason, and remembered how strange it was when an early version appeared many years ago in Joe Bruchac’s venerable journal The Greenfield Review. I had published just a handful of poems at the time, so when the issue arrived in the mail I immediately looked up my name on the contents page and–like every ego-ridden writer–flipped to the page that cradled my poem.Read More
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A New Year’s Surprise
I responded yesterday to a New Year’s haiku/tanka challenge at Issa’s Untidy Hut and was delighted this morning to find one of my poems among the three runners up. Many thanks to the blog’s author Don Wentworth, editor of my favorite micro-magazine, Lilliput Review.Read More
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A Blogger’s Notebook 12
The following found poem stitches together 19 headlines from ads for MFA programs published in the January / February 2010 issue of Poets and Writers—an issue focused on “inspiration.” Each discreet sentence is a headline; those presented as parenthetical statements are, of course, not in parentheses in the ads themselves. The headlines appear in the same order as the ads appear in the publication. To Writing Programs: A Canticle This way, that way, that way, this, Here and there a fresh love is.Read More