new pomes

I, um, have these three poems up at ::diode:: if ya wanna check 'em out . . . Very happy to be in such good company.

I'm up!

My poem "Sleepers" is up today at qaartsiluni!

More good news

More good news: I got word yesterday afternoon that Dave and Beth are taking my poem "Sleepers" for the upcoming "Journaling the Apocalypse" edition of qaartsiluni. I'm terribly pleased.
__ __ __

As I was packing up from a visit with my folks this past April, I realized I didn't have room in my bag for my winter jacket. So I left it. When I visited in August, again there wasn't room in my bag (I do try to pack well, but also to carry as little as possible--hence a smallish bag). Looking back on the August visit, I recall that books were to blame as well.

So anyway, when I phoned home yesterday evening to let Mom & Dad know that the barium swallow (sounds like a futuristic species nesting on the wall of--what, a nuclear cooling tower?) had gone well (read: without incident) (I was afraid I might throw up during the procedure), Mom said she'd just mailed my jacket. Good timing, as we've had two consecutive freeze warnings--on Monday evening, along with dragging numerous plants into the apartment and laundry room, I also cut big bundles of basil and white sage. Gave some of the basil to the neighbors: this a small-leafed tricolor variety we'd never grown before: because it doesn't flower, it's stayed quite leafy all season. Smells wonderful in the kitchen (in a vase). I should have bought olive oil at the store. Need to whirrr up some hasty pesto, or if nothing else, run the basil and olive oil through the processor and freeze it like that.

Three poems find homes--

--or rather, one home, and a wonderful one at that: just heard from Patty Paine that three of my new poems will appear in the January issue of diode. I'm absolutely thrilled.

As promised

Today's mail brought Betsy Wheeler's Start Here, a gorgeously produced chaplet from Small Anchor Press with a very nice letterpressed cover designed by Lindsay Valentin. I've been waiting for this one . . . it's a single long poem; Betsy read several passages from it at her Bucknell reading last year and it really knocked me out. I read the whole thing in one breathless sitting. Go buy this chaplet; it's already half-sold-out.

* * *

I promised Arlene I'd post this poem. It first appeared in Florida Review in 2005:

THIEVERY

There are worse reasons to be caught
at midnight in my neighbor’s yard,
though I can’t think of any. Right
now, arrested mid-reach by the hard

twin headlight beams of her Pontiac,
I fish for a quick excuse. Perhaps
I’ve lost my watch? There’s a knack
to lying; I don’t have it. (Theft,

however, I’ve down pat.) Pockets
stuffed with rattling pods, I stand
unaccused. Virginia’s car groans past.
I’m off the hook; the old gal’s night blind.

Her daylilies surround me: past
their prime, hardly a bloom remains.
In the dark, I snitch the last
ripe pod: shiny seeds, obsidian

black, spill from its flared open end.
They’ll keep three months in my freezer,
sprout grass-thin blades in deep winter
under lights I’ve rigged in my cellar.

Three years, maybe four will pass
before they’re large enough to bloom.
I’ll give the lion’s share away,
persuade Virginia to make room.



[photo: tawny daylily, 2007]