Ruby lands

Grandpa is on the porch with his pipe, again.

I’m old enough to know this only happens

when he’s thinking of the deepest part of the lake

or if rain is coming

I can’t remember which,

but it doesn’t smell of petrichor

or barrels soaked in bourbon and wine.

Watching smoke rise makes the air look heavy,

it makes my body feel heavier, too,

thick with a hand pressing me down

to deepest part of river mouth,

open and wanting.

Like grandpa, I learn silence while staring

into forests or higher, out beyond the Mesa.

It’s easier to be silent

when every cardinal

is a different rock formation, sandy rippled

bookcliffs to the north, dead red canyons

sit across the west with left palm open,

right hand gripping a chalice of avant-garde wine.

This is a quiet one

This is joy

This is not a quiet one,

It’s tripping in a muddy 

swamp, water cold

on the arms, now in your hair. 

You’re not the only one 

rolled

into the marshland,

more shoes lost 

to this mud 

than –

who would steal 

5 odd boots?

the nearby river – 

more mouths, too.

It feels like magic pulls

with both hands 

to keep our things,

The chant under 

moon magic 

the cotton candy skies song 

they sing

each late summer 

night magic 

the first sip of a crisp 

effervescent rosé 

magic.

The Lure Tree

Because we make wines 
that taste like the land,
I take my corked bottles
to the lake by the Colorado river
and sip quietly 
where there are dozens 
of plastic lures
colored like a carnival
tangled up in the cottonwood
like prizes to be won over the water. 

Because I drink wines 
that remind me too much 
of reed-tinged mud,
I’ve spent so much 
of my childhood cradled 
by soft emerald grass,
that I do crave cups full 
of riverbed, and for whatever reason
I often forget to walk barefoot 
or just sit in my own pillowy 
earth grass too often,
I take my time 
taste the glacier-cold river,
sifted mineral and tart.

Aerating techniques

Dzia Dzia sits at the kitchen table
spoons apricot preserves onto Saltines,
I’m just a child and my whole world is inside my house.
Sometimes, I wish it were still this way.
Mostly, I take each day with a sip from different glasses
of wine around this sleepy canyon town on the river.

Every once in a while those sips bring me back to that table,
eating crisp or buttery crackers,
thinking hard of which jam I’m tasting.
I chase the tastes of wild blackberry foraging
with my stained small hands, small dark berries as sweet as
gray rain rolling across the Mesa, clouds,
low cotton candy for pulling, swirling.

Sort of like swirling a glass of wine
but once at a tasting the vintner told me it would take years
of playing gravity on a glass for it to aerate –
And now when I watch someone’s hand
grasping the cup and stirring up a tornado, I think of futility.
But tannins always welcome water, and I dip my empty stem
in the freezing river for a rinse before heading home,
inside so this desert can drink, I sit on the covered patio
drinking a mineral forward red blend
reminiscent of the rare petrichor this monsoon season brings.

Read “Absorption” by Lucy Zhang

Chosen by me as the Harbor Review Editor’s Prize 2022 winner, from my foreword: “What draws me to micro chapbooks is the forced transparency that happens to each poem from confinement of numerical inclusion. With large collections of poetry, some poems are more engrossing than others. In Lucy Zhang’s micro chapbook, Absorption, each poem has equal ability and power to “mold glutinous rice around our bones.”

…

Absorption highlights everyday experience to give readers a deeper sense of absorption—deeper than environment, than skin, than muscle—documenting the experience of “nitrogen crush[ing] my lungs, alveoli popping like bubble wrap.” Zhang turns the action of absorption into a poetic homage to the nanoscopic aspects of experience…”

Read Lucy’s 10 beautiful poems at Harbor Review today!

Ready for *wine* time?

This blog has gone a little dry, we can all see it. Luckily, it’ll soon be reborn! Wine time is coming. Are you excited for Western Colorado winery reviews with sprinkles of poetry? I am!

Happening soon on this blog… Kristiane writes— wine! Stay tuned.

Reading poetry for SurVision

Happy National poetry month! Here I read a poem originally published by SurVision and also in my full length collection, Self-Anointment with Lemons

Enter Harbor Review’s Jewish American Woman’s poetry prize!

I am so excited to introduce Harbor Review’s inaugural opening for our new poetry contest: The Jewish American Woman’s poetry prize!!

Check out submission details on Harbor Review’s website here.

Submit to the contest on Submittable, here!

This first contest will be judged by Nancy Naomi Carlson.

Submissions close April 30th. Good luck, you beautiful Jewish women. We are so honored to be able ot honor you!

Review of Call Me California (by Heather Sweeney)

Without getting too deep into a story, here, everything Heather Sweeney produces through poetry and art is truly beautiful work. I’m so honored to have Heather in my circle as alumni of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; as a Frank O’Hara lover; as a contemporary queen.

Read my review of Call Me California at Harbor Review!

Tiny Spoon’s Holiday Gift Guide!

Check out Tiny Spoon’s artists and contributor – focused Tiny Gift Guide!

You may see a familiar face (mine)! Books are a unique gift to share stories, emotions, and a way to get your mind off current events — if you want that sort of thing for your loved ones! 😉

There’s my new poetry collection, Self-Anointment with Lemons, and my face!

Click here to browse & shop the Tiny Gift Guide