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POETRY: PRINT & ONLINE JOURNALS

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Things You May Find Hidden in My Throat                                                         After Mosab Abu Toha

 

                         1.

A bud, tight pink, a cough caught

in the windpipe of my breath, until

I break into songs of the sixties: Monday

Monday,  California Dreamin,’ (I Can’t Get 

No) Satisfaction—lyrics, like scratch marks 

on a 45, leap from my lungs—but deep

in the sea of me, cat calls from bag boys 

delivering wild strawberries, corner boys whistling 

crude invitations to open my bloom.

 

 

                        2.

A howl lurks there too, longing

to rip loose, to be seduced,

to vibrate postponed truths—fears

shelved, discounted, craving

a buyer, an open ear. Unnamable

sensations burn as traveling fever dreams 

banging the back of my larynx,

seeking an exit sign that isn’t there.

 

 

                            3.

Dissect my trachea, and you’ll find spiraling 

traces of 8th-great-grandmother’s DNA, her voice

strangled in the loop of a rope, strung 

high on Boston Common, 1660. 

Three hundred years later, illnesses begin,

always in my throat—my sinew remembering

the force she felt when the boards dropped

away—voice box crushed, tongue hushed.

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INSIDE RIZZOLI’S BOOKSTORE, WHEN IT WAS ONCE ON WEST 57th       

My fingers trail across the cover of Mapplethorpe’s Pistils, 

smooth and cool as the skin of your inner thighs.

I move along the balcony, glancing below 

where you wander, disappear into the stacks.

 

I open a volume of Neruda, run my palm over the page 

until his line—a whisper to my thirsty lips conjures your kiss, 

the taste of our afternoon Ouzo still on my tongue.

Music begins to fill the quiet—Vollenweider’s languid jazz—

 

his fingers plucking electric harp strings—I think of your touch

along my spine when we dance. I begin to move

to the sounds of soft cymbal splashes folding

into the harp’s cascading runs, and the drummer’s

 

rhythmic beats against the taut skin of bongos. 

You must feel it too, for here we are—you climbing the stairs,

me along the balustrade—flush from the wine, the books, 

the music; my hand glides down the rail as yours slides up. 

 

Aboard the Sea Gal, Sea Legs Wide

Dear Virgin of Remedies

        SEMI-FINALIST - BLUE 29

  WINTER / SPRING 2024 CONTEST

Blue 29                                                    

                                             
In Memphis, she drank whiskey 

till dawn at the Blue Moon Saloon. 

Danced with an indigo-blue man,
her breath bitter as bleu cheese,

her cheek’s faded bruises, faint 

robin’s egg blue. When she blew 

out her candles, the light in her 

lapis eyes wicked away, 

disappeared into the navy-blue night, 

invisible as Blu-ray waves. Chilled 

wind rattled an azure-stained shutter,
made her shiver, made her blue,
made her drop the needle 

on Miles’ disc Kind of Blue.

She’d forgotten to make a wish.

Too late? She grabbed a box of Blue 

Diamond matches, snatched a

thin sliver of hope, struck its tip, 

held the shimmering blue-red flame

atop each of the twenty-nine

blackened-blue wicks, wishing, 

as she often did, for a brand new

sapphire-blue, do-over life.

The Danger in Meeting Your Lover for Lunch                   

You’ll consent to alcohol when he orders 

Ouzo—even though you’re to meet new clients 

at 2. You’ll repeatedly glance from him 

to the door with the rhythm of a minute-hand 

ticking off time, worried someone you know 

will see him holding your hand, massaging 

your fingers, signaling his desire to skip

dessert. Distracted, you’ll miss him ordering 

for you—a Greek salad—once again, 

you’ll realize he’s forgotten how you abhor 

olives—how he says nothing when you flick 

them aside—how you plan to end this meal

with a whisper to his ear, Mon amor, Plus jamais,

yet knowing, he will silence your lips with his—again.

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Cooling Off
Baby's Breath
Sharing A Tasting Menu
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September 27, 2023 Issue
Daredevils

While Viewing the Black Marble Clock

    Summer Camp

    Theme Issue: Blood

Issue 24, Spring '23

Someday I Will Love Merna Louise Featured in Issue 28 - Summer / Fall 2022

Someday I Will Love Merna Louise                                                After Susan Rich, Ocean Vuong, & Frank O'Hara

 

When nearsighted eyes fool her

footsteps—and tumbles turn her

early childhood days into skinned 

knees and face-first falls onto sidewalks

chalked with hopscotch forms, and 

scattered stones—this gangly girl,

captured for a moment, stands 

beside the blue family Buick, posing 

defiantly—fists on hips, ragtag dress 

hitched up—curled tongue sticking out 

from her frowning lips—her response 

to her photographer father, whenever 

he orders her to smile.

 

So, when does she begin to bite her tongue,

bury it deep in the well of her mouth?

Is it when she’s caught rolling up 

her below-the-knee skirt to mid-thigh height

as she walks to middle school one morning? 

Is her mother the first in a long queue 

of adults who school her on the rules 

and restrictions of good-girl dictums?

 

After braces and finishing school,

she walks in teen fashion shows, 

learns to turn her head just so—beguilingly 

tossing her hair, smiling on cue

for the photographer. To relax her 

clenched fingers, he teaches her to shake 

her wrists as if air-drying wet hands. 

His trick works long enough for the shot. 

As she walks off set, she sucks in her cheeks,

curls her tongue, tight inside her mouth—

strides like a model girl, fists swinging.

 After Selling Your Lake House

Featured in Fall Issue, 2021 & 2022 Print Edition

         Breakfast With My Father

Featured in Spring 2022 online& print edition

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Featured inVol 6, Issue 2, Fall 2021
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The Bullet Guys and Me
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 Secret-Keepers of Eastern Island



   She Could Have Lost A Hand

     I Pretend I'm a Long-Distance Jumper

 Featured in Lily Poetry Review, Issue 7 Winter 2022                       & Quartet Fall Issue, 2021

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My Paris Birthday

Featured in The Ekphrastic Review, August 15, 2021 

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Walking My Golden on a Rainy Day

Catch and Release

A Private Revelle

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Rocking Chair                                                              

                        

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FEATURED WRITER FEB 27, 2021

 

Clocking Time                                                                                                              

The Impermanence of Sandcastles      

 

The Haunting of Room 125 at The Campus Inn

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BEFORE GRAVITY                                                                     

Remember when we skipped everywhere?

Arms moving like counterpoint melodies,

knees rising, pedaling air,

ponytails swinging, whipping our backs,

slapping our faces.

Bouncing along concrete squares

cautious to never land on a crack

(even on days we cared little for mother).

Skipping swiftly, our bodies lifting from earth, 

repeating that singular sensation, that beat of a second 

when we were suspended in space —

no longer rising, not yet falling.

So light, so light.

                      STAR 82 REVIEW
              ISBN/EAN 13:  1499371276 /   9781499371277

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             MiPOesias

 ISBN-13: 978-1499708882

MOJAVE RIVER REVIEW

 
HOW TO TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF A TRAFFIC TICKET       IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY                                                                         
 

And Officer, it was as if the tree reached out from the woods,

just there — do you see the slick of leaves and snapped branches?

And the rain beat down so hard the wipers wept

 

and my eyes stung with smoky mascara.  Sir,

the mascara — it’s not supposed to run. Why does everything run?

 

And that pine fence blew loose, blocking my path.

And the funeral, it’s started by now, and I’m not there, sir.

 

Lo siento, sir.  It’s getting cold. You have snow on your mustache,

sir. Yes, so easy to brush away — still, snow can smother a boy.

Lo siento, sir.  My papers must be here, buried in my bag.

 

Do you have children, sir? Niños?  You’re lucky. Perhaps

it was the mailbox I passed — with its latch undone. And I was wondering,

will the casket be open?  Do they do that here?  I was wondering,

will my son’s blue eyes still shimmer beneath his brittle lids? 

 

 

 

                                                     

 

 

 

 

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TWO APRONS 

 

She hangs the gingham apron loose around her neck.  Frayed grosgrain ribbons edge three pockets.  Sewn in her youth and stored in her hope chest, the apron hangs low over breasts heavy as breadfruit.  She pulls wooden clothespins from a pocket.  Bites them between her teeth.  It is laundry day on the prairie.  She hangs her man’s clothes — lets them stiffen on the line.  An errant rooster feather clings to his shirt snapping in the wind.  She plucks it off and tucks the bit of red in her pocket.  She will tickle him with it later.

 

 

 

She pulls the butcher’s apron over her head. Wraps the ties twice around her waist.  Her white sheath catches drips of red as she lifts a tray of beef scraps.  It is hamburger-grinding day.  She pushes twenty pounds of cow through churning metal teeth, blends it into strings of red meat.  Smeared with blood by the end of her shift, she flicks errant bits of gristle from her chest, wipes the knives clean against her white thighs.  She will cash her check at the corner bar — lick white foam from atop a stream of beers and kiss any man with clean nails.

 

                                                   
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CATCH AND RELEASE  

                                                                        

Father’s thick fingers bait our hooks and cast our lines,

sending shimmying circles across the lake.  When

the ripples smooth to nothing, I sigh, as if with them. I am five.  

 

Dragonflies helicopter overhead.  My line jerks with my first fish —

too small to keep.  Father releases it — it’s mother-of-pearl scales glimmering in the morning light, cold body undulating deeper until it disappears.

 

Shrimp carapace scattered on a white plate. I am twenty-five.

The difference between the wind in my hair and the wind on the waves —

nothing more than quarks in motion here or there.

 

Buttery fingers wiped on white linen leave the DNA 

of ancient crustaceans.  On the table, a splayed lobster tail, 

crab shells sucked dry and the diamond ring I’ve cast aside.

 

I slip from the room while this man who once seemed so alluring

takes a call.  Survival is a question of instinct, moving this way 

rather than that.  Seeing the bait bag for what it is — a test.

NAMING AN HEIR, A PARENT

THE SQUAW VALLEY REVIEW

          ISBN 9780988895331

       SILVER BIRCH PRESS    

"ALL ABOUT MY NAME" POETRY SERIES

SOUTHERN BOUND WHITE GIRL

 

Traveling slow as heat along the Dixie Highway

we pass bare bottom brown boys digging in dirt.

An old woman sits outside her one-room shack

fanning her skin, creased as dried mud.

 

Further on, a khaki-covered white man

sits atop a horse — rifle in hand.

Bound ankles shuffle, chains clink a dusty song

and twenty sweat-soaked black backs

bend, digging a ditch already dug. Across the field

a bright Georgia road sign promises

    Peaches Grits Biscuits Just Ahead

                ____________

  

    White Only       Colored       

I am six — sunburned pink

I follow the arrow for Colored

 

 

 

 

 

 

     SILVER BIRCH PRESS         "ME AS A CHILD" POETRY SERIES

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