Poems
Chapbooks (click on links below)
Other Interventions, if Required (2025)
Shorts
I WANT THIS POEM TO SOUND LIKE ANDY WARHOL'S SHOES
Cute as a pie crust.
Lazy as these pens I can’t throw away.
As light as this day
hiding from night
Quick as a bell.
Shy as a hallmark hug.
As supple and smug as this earlobe I tug.
I want this poem to sound like Andy’s Warhol’s shoes.
Soft as a star.
Quiet as a buttonhole.
Gay as her pink cloud of candy floss fluttering
in the breeze.
A DITTY FOR EDITH SITWELL
Cheery chatbots,
Sea of spam,
Meta jackpots,
Iris scans.
Rising rates
For data mining
Worm through statutes
They are signing.
Right-wing trolling
Seeding memes,
Endless scrolling,
Rage-bait screams.
AI slop,
Pandora’s plague,
Sly avatars—
You’d turn in your grave
POETS AND TREES
Like poets, trees are restless
and tend to linger over things a little longer
than necessary. They seem most at ease
leaning into the wind, a little left of center.
Poets, being penniless, like to lie
under trees for free lessons in form
offered in shade.
Like trees, poets are dreamers
and tend to circle into things a little slower
than needed. They seem most pleased
stealing into the sea, a little right of certainty.
Trees, being tuneless, like to bloom
over poets for free lessons of song
offered in love.
BURIAL
Thirty-six swipes
to turn off the alerts.
Thirteen minutes to delete the apps.
Forty-seven spade stabs
to dig the hole.
Twenty-three hefts and stomps
to pack and tamp the soil.
Five hours of battery life.
Three hundred and twenty-three
unanswered calls.
LIVING LIBRARY
Less life than death in
Faint scent of long-gone reader left in
My 1948 living library Dickinson
How the dead live through us
Is a mystery
Will the scent of my books
Move my son
Or anyone?
LAST PIECE
Usually pale blue, sea or sky,
ribbon-cut, tab edges frayed
over thirty years of forced fits.
Possibly a wistful piece
in a shade of green, lying hidden
in Gainsborough’s Groves,
or floating among Monet’s water lilies.
Our last piece might carry a dot of white
—ice, star, tooth, moon.
A lace-trimmed bodice.
A candle flame.
The hand of a child.
MY GARDEN CREATURES
hobble
tipsy towards heat ripened fruit
to copulate.
Their limber legged couplings
at dusk
dazzle the children
who arrogate
dominion over this compost kingdom
like little Roman emperors,
decreeing to each and every bug
its pleasure,
its fate.
WATCHING THEM WANDER
Today I’ll write
for the pleasure of gazing
at the jagged shoreline
of my words
zigzag wanderings.
Just today I’ll silence the censor
and let them race through my stanzas
pulling their flimsy kites
of meaning.
Some will saunter round my commas.
Some will soften my full stops.
One might call a colon to task
or pull from her pocket
a Dickinson dash.
Today I’ll let my lovely adjectives
rouge their cheeks
and spot their breasts with L’Eau Sézane
to snag my stolid nouns.
A QUESTION
O wise one please enlighten me
On art and artifice
‘Artifice is trying to be
And art, well, art just is’
PEITHO
With eyes like stars in disguise
Through the pallid night light stalks
Steals her men away from their wives
On orphic evening walks
LOST VOICE
Last seen in a field far from here.
Chip on shoulder. Spot on ear.
Heart on sleeve. No tag. Quite light.
Responds when called and will not bite.
The early night’s his hiding space.
If seen, approach, but please don’t chase.
Less sensitive to sense than sound.
We miss him so.
Reward if found.
MY LOVE
You are the itch
Between my inner ear and tongue
The woman I would choose
If I had to share a lung
Your kisses send me out to sea
Like a dandelion’s kite
You are my tree, solid as wood
Against the starless night
ESSENTIAL BONDS
The wind woos the frisky clouds.
The naked moon nuzzles the dark.
The stars graze the lips
of the wanton waves.
The randy rocks rumba the sea.
Dusk sneaks into dawn’s bedroom.
Time and space lie tangled in the sheets,
their smoke rings rising.
CROW-BROKEN RECORD
When I set this thin poem on the snow
for safekeeping, a crow darted in and snatched it up.
I don’t know what need a crow would have
for a poem about a crow
snatching up a poem about a crow
snatching up a poem about a crow
snatching up a poem about a crow
snat—
TRY NOT TO THINK OF POE
when you write about a raven
or Ted Hughes, when your topic
is a crow.
Now close your eyes and try
not to think of an elephant
or Gertrude Stein
when you write about a rose.
Don’t let Basho barge in
when you write about the spring.
But if Ruth Stone sneaks inside you
let her teach your words to sing.
THURSDAY MORNING.
Fog.
Rain-pecked leaves glisten
in the fat morning light.
Clusters of umbre la la las
bobbing in soft unison.
The incessant rocking
of the clockwork arms is comforting,
and maddening.
QAND
Today is a day like any other.
Rain peppers palm fronds.
Tehran has turned in her sleep.
A locust leaps from chaff,
and as the last song is sung
by the schoolgirls,
tea is sucked through qand.
How sweet it is.
THANK YOU
In the time it takes
to touch the tip of your tongue
to your teeth to say it –
the birth of a billion stars
SCAVENGERS
Fellow scavenger, with the soggy fry
dangling from your beak,
you are luckier than me today.
All I have to show
for an hour of rummaging
through the thesaurus is “entreat”—
a listless simile
I cannot eat.
THE WOODPECKER
A
Bird
Can
Delight
Even
Forest
Ghosts
Howling
In
Jest
Knock-knocking
Lightly
Meandering
Nesting
On
Parched
Quills
Ransacking
Solemnly
Tap-tap-tapping
Under
Vast
Woodlands
Xerothermic
Yodeler
Zigzagger
QUOTING ZENO
Zeno’s
Yoctoseconds
Expressed
Within
Velocity
Upheld
Twelve
Suppositions –
Rather
Quirky
Paradoxes
Only
Now
More
Likely
Kept
Jokingly
In
Hand
Given
For
Example
During
Conventions
By
Astrophysicists
HOLLYWOOD
For Charlie
But she wouldn’t for me
DEWDROP
Even infants know
this tiny naked tear of light
hanging from a fern frond
is harmless,
that it will burst if brushed
by fingertip or tongue.
TADPOLES
Approach them gently,
for they can sense your presence
and hear your silent movements
through their skin.
Sneak the tin below them.
Don’t rush.
Your sister will teach you the trick—
how to pull the net through
the rice stalks
without breaking the surface
or stirring the silt.
If you are lucky, you can coax one
into the hollow of your cupped hands
and feel it brush against your palm.
EPITAPH
Will you please read them now?