We all have a plane crash.The one that took our motheror a limb, a husband,solace, orsanity.What is yours?What plaguesyou? Wakes you upin the middleof a dry meetingin a cold roomand you sweat so suddenly, andremember justhow lonelyyou are.What? Is it the rainy picnicthe one that’s fun,nonetheless,until the potato saladspills, it was hisfavorite and it’s nowall over... Continue Reading →
A JOURNAL POEMSometimes random lines from journal pages, when lined up like a poem, make sense in a way that is as odd as the world is these days, and therefore I like them. The image is horizontal reflections turned into verticals. Everything is strange and perfect. As I stand preoccupied at the kettleThe... Continue Reading →
Underneath the Cottonwood Tree In My America Autumn Wins In my America only the seasonsrun for office, and they always winwith campaigns as honestas snowflakes, as sharp aslightning, clean as a mama loon’scall, each heart-rendering notea sincere promise sure to be keptas colorful as laying beneatha Cottonwood in Octoberall complication naked, abandoned,just a couple twigs... Continue Reading →
for Sean and for Danny, Cindy, Brian and Gwen Sean and I at Flagstaff's annual Hullabaloo. He had just lost the mustache contest, so wrong! As I walked at the lagoons this past Thursday morning, five days after his passing, I asked Sean to show me a sign, show me some sign that he was... Continue Reading →
I had a boss once who, when I knocked on her door to wish her well on her vacation, looked up, and said, "Anne Marie, unless you are dying, I do not have time for you." Well, what else could I do after that but write a poem? So I did. Unless You're Dying* for... Continue Reading →
With the movie Barbie making changes in people's minds, their understanding of feminism/sexism/racism etc., and their understanding of who can make great movies (Congrats, Greta Gerwig), I thought I'd pull out a piece posted seven years ago, dust it off, and post it again. Here's to Barbie! Some 20 years ago when it first showed... Continue Reading →
They slide under calendarsswallow hard dark hours that bouncebetween solstices. Like midnight snacks. They're cold waves chompingat Arctic shorelines, they nip awayat days. Eat minutes like sea snails.Swim to the Verde and napwith herons in clipped shadows.They find me. All bony-shouldered. An old dinghytossed and turned against rusty pillowsslapped by broken oars and nightmares.Cozy in... Continue Reading →
Relapse for those addiction has left behind Side by side like cushions on the couchthey slide into each others’ angles eachothers’ next as close as lint in Levi’spockets or freckles like chapstickon each others’ lips noodles in a bowlso salty so close they are each others’exhale laugh and sigh watching theirshows at night she absorbs... Continue Reading →
The New York Times published a bit last month about languishing. How so many of us are stuck in an odd limbo, a languishing, a time in which we are not necessarily thrilled about anything, or not much anyway. And a time in which we are not quite in that state of panic or surprise,... Continue Reading →
random lines of recent journals, dropped, gathered, and restrunglike pearls or knuckles or green light bulbs in the chandelier pt II dream of head on collisionswake with a start on impactbreathless and gratefulslash piles like pimples dot the slopes and meadowstrails snake along the mounds left there to meander and dwindlemelt underneath a boulder or... Continue Reading →
An orange skull, relentless, conversationalalmost, watches me each morning, its chinon the neighbor’s roof, its silhouette perfectin the pear and pomegranate leaves, vacuouseyes staring as if to threaten the sun to rise.Boneman will be reshaped or disappearedif the already-hot dawn breeze kicks up a bitbut it won’t, the hector shade of peach is allbut guaranteed... Continue Reading →
To Sharon Olds and Pablo Neruda (RIP): Thank you for making odes amazing She lives inside me still, after all these yearsas quiet as a drop of blood sliding down a swollencanal. She wasn’t always so noiseless, so white, she waslush and screaming vermillion like a flycatcher caughtin a uterus. She’d stain anything that happy,... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 