Recent Work

Detail of The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons by J.M.W. Turner

Places you can find my work this spring:

• Mineral Lit Mag — "the front of this postcard is covered in flames"
• Drunk Monkeys — "I Am 5 and I Want to Be"
• post ghost press — matchboxes (!) and small poems for the masses

A Prayer for the New Year

Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash

Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Telescope

by Louise Glück

There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you are living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You've stopped being here in the world.
You're in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning.

You're not a creature in a body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Then you're in the world again.
At night, on a cold hill,
taking the telescope apart.

You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false.

You see again how far away
every thing is from every other thing.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

The poet last summer at Earl Mosley's Hearts of Men dance program

My siblings are the greatest. They're smart, funny, and kind, and they're constantly making me proud. I wanted to share a poem from my brother Michael, a fellow crafter, baker, and dancer who will be starting high school in the fall. 

At a time when his peers are doing all they can to conform, Michael has remained a beacon of individuality and courage. Here he is talking about his experience with a life-changing summer dance program for men. 

And here's a poem he wrote toward the end of the school year:

Individuality

by Michael Horowitz

Style is in the eye of the beholder? 

All I get is the cold shoulder

You call my shoes insane

Maybe yours are too plain

You call the way I talk abnormal

Maybe you talk way too formal

Because of you I’m afraid to be who I am

Making me think my looks are a scam

What defines me, what defines you?

Is it being false over true?

Looks are deceiving 

And personalities can be misleading

All of your insecurities, are just like your impurities

Trying to cover up who you are, instead of shining like a star

So next time don’t follow the crowd

Try to be a little out loud

Because you have nothing to lose because you choose, how

you view, who can abuse, your muse

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

No it’s simply being a bit bolder!

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Photo: Eric Montfort // CC BY-ND 2.0

The Destination
by Jane Hirshfield

I wanted something, I wanted. I could not have it.
Irremediable rock of refusal, this world thick with bird song,
tender with starfish and apples.
How calming to say, "Turn right at the second corner,"
and be understood,
and see things arrive as they should at their own destination.
Yet we speak in riddles—
"Turn back at the silence." "Pass me the mountain."
To the end we each nod, pretending to understand.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Der Blaue Weiher by Hugo Henneberg

The Night Ocean
by Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

We are the night ocean filled
with glints of light. We are the space
between the fish and the moon,
while we sit here together.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

The Mangroves
by Mary Oliver


As I said before, I am living now
in a warm place, surrounded by
mangroves. Mostly I walk beside
them, they discourage entrance.
The black oaks and the pines
of my northern home are in my heart,
even as I hear them whisper, "Listen,
we are trees too." Okay, I'm trying. They
certainly put on an endless performance
of leaves. Admiring is easy, but affinity,
that does take some time. So many
and so leggy and all of them rising as if
attempting to escape this world which, don't
they know it, can't be done. "Are you
trying to fly or what?" I ask, and they
answer back, "We are what we are, you
are what you are, love us if you can."


photograph by Barbara Fernandez

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like 
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time. 


art by Danna Ray

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.


photograph © Victoria Smith

Across the Universe

In a gesture that embodies the spirit of the Voyager project in a very real and wonderful way, Grant from the Guild of Scientific Troubadours has written a song called "Golden Record" in response to my poem "Barnard's Star." I've reprinted the poem below, so you can read it and then go check out the song.

Barnard's Star
after Ann Druyan

I send for you my heartbeat,
the rhythms of my latest dream.
You are just now finding the frozen clicks
of muscles, cooling like just-parked cars.
Through endless fields of fire and dust,
we send whale song, one noisy kiss.

Every other romance
is nothingness now, every whale
a great cage of bone and blue air.
But fast to you, bright Ophiuchus,
one whispered love is dancing.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

from "Aurora Leigh"

And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And,–glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,–
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.


poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
photograph by Sarah Ryhanen

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Straight Talk from Fox by Mary Oliver

Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of ever
moment’s miracle. Don’t think I haven’t
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.


photograph by Nathaniel Atakora Martin

Lady Lazarus in the Bath

I have done it again.
One week in every seven
I ruin it.

Bones in the basin
And the sodden skin
Above it; I roll

On a beaded spine
And stain the fever liquid
With my rust.

The water in the
Curtain's shadow--
Once faucet-sweet--

Now might be the ocean's.
I leave my poppy-petal
Pigment in the tub.

These are my roots
My lashes now.
I may be tarnished silver;

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was scared.
It was an accident.

Now in voluntary
Madness I submerge,
Then, dripping my undoing, stand:

Out of the water
I rise with my wet hair
And only ashes to wear.





original poem here.
photograph by Pennie Naylor.

What to Do When a Poet, Now Dead, Releases a New Book of Poems

in memory of Deborah Digges



Read the editor's note.

Reflect that this manuscript
has been respected. Wonder,
when you read that they tried
to preserve her intentions,
how much of her handwriting spattered
each page.

Read the epigraph--something
obscure--well, that's how
she would have wanted it.

Read the apologetic jacket,
the back cover with its
flat, detached praises.
On the back flap, her photograph.

Look hard at the headshot
as though her eyes, warm even
in a black and white rectangle,
have some explanation.

Close the book.

Try again tomorrow.




Painting: Cloud #16 by Ambera Wellmann

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Lorelei

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963)
illustration by Arthur Rackham

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly


they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,


dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch
and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,


this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,


even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;



I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want



to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.




-Mary Oliver

photograph by Jipps

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Poppies in October

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly ----

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.



Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963)
photograph by flickr user scheithelapeyre

Interlude: Other People's Poetry, Inappropriately Timed Haiku Edition

That spring night I spent
Pillowed on your arm
Never really happened
Except in a dream.
Unfortunately I am
Talked about anyway.





-Lady Suo (11th-12th cent.), tr. Kenneth Rexroth.
One of my favorite poems in every season.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

JULIET:
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging; such a wagoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties: or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night.--Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night;--come, Romeo;--come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than snow upon a raven's back.
Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.






Wm. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 2
Photograph by Elia Cherici

Ode Upon the Poem I Can't Remember

Horse. There was a horse,
and a tall girl also. I want to say one blue eye,
one green, but maybe that was the horse?
He broke her heart--the poet, that is,
broke the girl's heart,
not the horse's. I think.
It all comes in sepia flashes,
as though I'm the one writing it.

A rusted car is parked and stuck
armpit-high in the meadow; abandoned
or occupied I can't tell.
Blonde grass; a sheepish kiss
in porchlight before
she creeps in after curfew.




photograph by Rico Moran.
Does anyone have any idea what this poem is? I'm starting to believe I dreamt it, but my dreams are never this well-composed or meaningful.