And look at that, I wrote another poem... are question marks inappropriate in the middle of poems?

Telescope

Your new name is Night,
in the grand tradition of
bright constellations.

Or do you flicker
forty million miles off?
constant explosions

so far away that
they tumble on to me as
pale, frozen star beams.

In which I write a poem about the lion wind...

This Sunday

This wind is the offspring of
the four foot snow layered deep
on the playgrounds and tire tracks
between Boston and Portland, Maine.

It growls through thin branches
and sends twigs and dead leaves to
scratch at chilled window panes,
to scrape across wet pavement and
push puddles down the drainage.

It shifts, like a dreaming beast,
against the walls of our Sexton
home, aching for unwelcome entrance.

Transatlantic Project- The Harbinger

Another installment of the Transatlantic Project. For those of you just tuning in, Transatlantic Project is a collaborative podcast by me and Steve. Every couple weeks, we share prompts, explore new (or old) poetry forms and riff off of each other. We record the product and share it with you.

You can listen to my poem, The Harbinger, at podbean, or check out our other poems we've recorded.

The Living is Easy

The Living is Easy

There are garlic shoots
under our naked arches

we come to this place
to pick the honeyed clover
to revel in a dream summer

our finger laced together
in a child's clasp or a
silver lover's claddagh

but in the waking hour
we shiver under blankets
and our toes trace night

circles against the sheets
our voices are low growls

In which I write a sad poem

Elegy to a fierce creature
     who once lived in the burnt-out, 
     abandoned house across from ours.

There is no poem that I want to write
about the broken bridge of fleshless ribs,
open to the sun, laid bare on the asphalt-

but she was full and furred, once.
She was two star-pointed eyes piercing
the midnight brush on the side of the road.

There was a little girl in a tutu who used
to sneak out breadcrumbs and milk.
There were clumsy hands and greasy pets.

Frame her outside the context of our love
and she was a fierce hunter, a feral mother,
an urban warrior, a short-lived fury.

Transatlantic Project: The New Year

Hi, friends! It's time for another installment of The Transatlantic Project. You can hear my poem here and read Steve's here.

For those without audio, here's the poem.

The New Year

We start at the base of the bur oak tree
the old trunk circled with a frothing ice
thick thigh roots in winter stasis

We move to the floodplains the
field of frosted wheat stretched and
cracking as hide across an old drum

We end high on a wind-carved bluff
above the low Missouri river with her
sluggish currents sliding down the vein

We pass a plaque to Lewis & Clark
in greened bronze at the highest point
to make fresh boot tracks in the snow

the transatlantic project

Salutations! My lovely friend, Steve, and I have endeavored to start a poetry podcast called the Transatlantic Project. It's so named because he's in Birmingham, England and I'm here in good ole Missouri, USA. Part of the project is that we give each other prompts each week and respond.

This week, Steve gave me a prompt to write a poem containing the words snow, skeleton, and eclipse.

You can listen to it here.


winter break

The thing about clouds,
At least these snow clouds,
is that they are the great
leveller, a gray blanket, a
simple backdrop for rolling
outlines of skeleton fingers
grasping at the horizon, for
the industrial windmill to
fade quietly into, located on
the edge of campus, where
we all try to fade quietly in,
where there are still cigarette
butts and the stadium looms,
unused over Winter break,
shadowed by empty bleachers,
eclipsed by the reverent silence
of the calm before the storm.


Let us know what you think! His poem is posted to his blog.

Happy listening!