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 →
Or Three Poems and a Funeral So it is October. The month when the veil between this life and after is its thinnest. And the clouds are their most dramatic. And the colors. And so many friends have recently lost parents. Loved ones. And so I offer this. Three poems, and accompanying blather looking at death.... Continue Reading →
My brain is quiet. My heart still. This is a summer rambling. For when the cat's got your tongue. Or mine. And thus I sweep. Just ask the girls. If they see me sweeping, it does not occur to them that perhaps there was dust or pet hair or sand on the floor, and it needed to be... Continue Reading →
Steamer Trunk The gap in the ground yawned like a toothless mouth waiting for teeth waiting for the box of her bones aligned and perfumed like sundries in a steamer trunk. Her death certificate stamped like a passport in her pocket currency exchanged and shiny new pennies leveled on her closed eyes ready to go. How... Continue Reading →
Because June, for all of its weddings and graduations and summer celebrations, is also, for so many I know, a month to remember those we have lost, I decided to share an old favorite poem of mine. Both of my parents died in June. A dear friend's deceased son was born in June. There are... Continue Reading →
Dang. Life keeps happening. And weather. After days and days of weirdly warm southwest weather, winter appears to have remembered this part of the map. She’d been drowsing in the memory of autumn's lush colors, no doubt. Remembering the heavy scent of the dying oak leaves, the heady fragrance of creosote in the breeze. All... Continue Reading →
My mother claimed, not a boast mind you, a claim, that I was independent before I was born. She may have also used the words ‘stubborn,’ ‘brat,’ or 'bold,' but mostly she referred to me as independent. Surely it was no surprise when at 21 I went west. It was always a surprise that I... Continue Reading →
I decided at the beginning of 2017 that I would finally make the move I had been talking about making since I became an empty-nester. I would leave Flagstaff. Find a smaller newer home. Go on a residential adventure, so to speak. That was five years ago. The plan moved from the back and then... Continue Reading →
Everything sings pink this morning where has August gone? Sunflowers light the sky long after sunset summer’s last song Autumn’s chill settles softly now across my pillow and chin September sits so patiently I’ll bring the heavy quilt in.
pocket poet 