Selling Poetry

I spend the money

I earned selling my poetry book,

my performance, my writing prompts.

I pump poems into my gas tank,

buy a friend a pint of poem,

feed poems to my lover for brunch,

pour cream into my poem

and honey, and sip.

after the online auction, where they were not offered

my mother’s favorites

of my high school

and college

artwork

are rotting

in a land fill

in central Illinois

beating me to it

Join me in Salida on July 26

Thinning Beets on Summer Solstice

It is right to pluck

small sprouts you planted by seed

when fear over-sowed.

See how seedlings crowd

hoard space, soil, light, and water

stunt one another.

It is not failure

not a waste to thin the rows.

Give roots room to grow.

Not one life is lost.

Stuff the sprouts, right then, into

your animal mouth.

Tender abundance!

Feed them to Love, your coven.

Throw what’s left to birds.

Away from Here

Once you return from urban anonymity

that weightless, faceless flight

strip the bed, wash its clothes

push the broom across the floor

feed two weeks of dust to woods outside your door

empty a suitcase into little rooms

grateful your body still can move to perform

such small chores and you have joyful work to do

here, at home, in a minute mountain town

where trios of children yell hello and wave as you drive by

and high school girls nod and smile, call you

by your given name as you walk the dairy aisle

and the cashier offers updates on her son

the quiet, dark hearted one you took under your wing

brilliant artist, shy guitarist, budding engineer

now a man who—like younger you, like you foretold

when both your hearts were sinking in that school

—found himself, found his people, found his will to be

wild haired, heartily embodied, away from home.

For L.M.

Instructions for Shining

Sit still in any pose with a mind

for your body’s preferences and needs.

Notice where gravity presses against you.

Disappear just above it.

Find open silence holding the hum

of the electric heater,

the oven fan cooling after biscuits.

Silence doesn’t fight noise.

It is a mother with the world

squirming on its lap.

Feel your chest soften—

butter melting, sun breaking open

above the peak, a crumb at a time

before whole radiance.

How long can you shine on everything,

everything, before you shift

to pick up the sock, the pen?

late Februrary 2026

two Tacoma haiku

if you pretend well

traffic is ocean hiss, gull

wave crash, moaning whale

webs glisten between

towers of morning roses

limber avenues

city silence

on this corner

silence is traffic thrum

whispers under

engine roar

wind chimes

under kiwi vine

climbing this pergola

where I learn

a new song

tone by tone

each running peal

of metal cylinders

I repeat

in my own voice

the body’s wind

to commit

a phrase

to memory

sing it to myself

the rest of the day

Instamatic photo—

of a stack of mixed media paper

corners fluttering

weighted with gelli print plates

pliable, playful

irresistible to small and large hands

a box of acrylic tubes, most hues

two brayers, pack of baby wipes

mineral oil, old catalogues

two heaps of fern and artemisia fronds

clover and rose leaves

waiting for the daughter, newly sonned

and mother, newly creped

to begin, to create

mother touched by daughter’s

candid shot, the mechanical click

and whirring unfurling

of the tongue of the machine

snatched and shook, placed

on a table to develop

anticipation of a moment seized

beautifully

days later

found facedown in the trash bin

by the mother

who put it in her journal beneath

this poem, finally aware

after a night of perimenopausal

moping, that photos are not

necessarily memories or validation

and the women’s printed

garden leaves and hands, layered

deeper images buried

though not memories either

will suffice to jog the mind

into sweet recall of the windy

day they made prints

an act of pre-Kodak archiving

and that the photo itself, a still life

deemed, for some reason

a poor work of art by the daughter—

is repurposed by the mother

as a guard against dementia

her own mother’s quiet new friend

who resends the same old photo

of the two of them

day after day by text

Wholly, but

In my daughter’s home

her living dream

I wake

and walk

paths of roses

between evergreens

visit jabbering chickens

rest under a pergola of kiwi

chase her glorious bubbling

little boy

wholly

I am in it

but for missing

my love’s skin

his eyes so close to mine

we are nearness blind