Orb Capture in Pueblo, CO

A poet’s eye can determine droplets

movement

orbs full of—no, that’s different;

whether a ghosted-orb is transparent or hollow,

and what they are full of

takes time and furrowed brows to

try and unravel.

Today, accidental video captures

are the most common proofs

of fuzzed-out zoom-ins.

 

Look at the coronas, the running away,

a visual

sonic boom captured

on an early morning door

camera, float of feathers elsewhere or

three children ringing

the bell and skittering away

only to be caught in the act:

one furthest toward

the road (the same one

who always fell behind

and took off first),

 

one who peeks from behind the column,

 

one who touched the door, came closest to foreground,

triggers the camera;

still pulling an arm away, we see

in waves

 

leaving a darkened space

to fill with our wondering,

what do you need to say?

will you return to help us understand?

where do you go when we don’t feel you?

 

are you just exerting less energy so I can’t feel you near?

 

Year of the Plague Doctor

hello, hello

welcome to our new decade,

it is a new atomic age,

it’s a day where poetry is more important than sliced pie

 

and I am your eco poet,

you may remember me from hits like

“sat on a railroad track to prevent plutonium”

or “run like a river on every nerve in a body”,

spreads the good word of “drink kombucha in moderation”

and I haven’t mastered

whether to put chia seeds or milk in first

 

 

but what I mean is, I am not your regular nature writer,

it is time for a modern Plague Doctor,

take my chicory root neat

kind of doctor

waiting for the next violet death to strike

and I light a candle, beak all aglow

 

as I wipe wet hair with a cocktail

of coconut and neem oil,

hibiscus and raw shea

back and forth,

back and forth

 

back and forth

Pillows

There is always

one forgotten, left

from the list; this is resilience

perhaps

or definition of a roar,

an echo made

to strain across

lists we write ourselves to remember

and yet…

 

I can’t say I’m sorry

I’ve forgotten you,

 

where, in fact, does time go,

and why has it chosen to

dig them up?

 

rotten

loam-soaked brainwave

braided into biomimicry,

I would bury you

under silk pillows, hundreds of them,

if I could.

body descriptions

The body becomes an effect of the language that seeks to describe it. (Erin Gross, Revealing Bodies)—

 

we see how performing a bud-body
crimson, performs an act of becoming,
how a body can

move. Become legged production
redefine skeleton boundary
to dismantle those boned boundaries

to claim a new fingered trueness
to become

impulse alive in movement
choreograph-act-deliberately in refusal,
in variations of hair-form and style.—

 

what is happening in this body space
and to this space?

no one knows you like you, like the freckle
folded near clitoris, whether cardboard

or plastic slides smoother

doing foreign acts in the setting flimsy body occupies
and involves doing acts that are strong
foreign to the body’s previously-enacted sequences

and who does enact the diminution,

who defines an arm in retrograde

skin of ability’s potential:

propel tendencies, eye flitter articulated as expression
in the field of “the actual”.
these lung fields float at the threshold of breath
perception,
and they create branched paths of resistance

yet cohesion

Messy Beds

To be born under a shoddy zodiac,

or to self-anoint with

aphasia, this is what poets do—

 

offer and receive education as

a microscopic observance of walks down strands

of dust tangled in hair,

 

plastic neon skeletons

hidden in branches,

where they’ve always been without notice.

 

A riot breaks in a fish bowl

radiation blows like stars

across blued wind

 

and wouldn’t it be so nice

if sun broke through teeth today?

 

What this is

is all just to say

the act of writing is not different

than all dark bedrooms,

messy beds I’ve laid in

and forgotten.

Poetry Review up on Harbor Review!

Pleased and honored to review Cheryl Whitehead’s “So Ghosts Might Stop Composing”, a haunting, beautiful, tragic collection. Read it now at Harbor Review!

 

2020 writing goal: 100 rejections for the year

What??? A goal of 100 rejections for 2020? What kind of garbage writing goal is that?!

 

It’s beautiful and true advice pulled from an article written by Kim Liao; “…I asked her what her secret was, and she said something that would change my professional life as a writer: ‘Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.'”

 

If you work hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too 😉

 

Read Kim’s full article here. Happy 2020 writing goals, all!