POEMS

The Pretender   

When he said, So, tell me about yourself,  
I turned to make sure my shadow
was still attached, flat, colorless, vaguely 
body shaped. Like a paper doll.  

My skin seems to stretch more tidily 
around the bones of others than it does my own. 
My thoughts cradle better in someone else’s brain, 
spring more easily from someone else’s mouth. 
I prefer to write in someone else’s voice. 

You may hear me from the next room 
reciting lines assigned to the dead or distant, 
searching for myself on random gravestones, 
in portraits painted with raucous colors 
I recognize from somewhere. 

Through a crack in my wall  
you can watch me cut dolls from cardboard,  
shut them in a drawer, 
and double lock the door behind me. 

Published in Sky Island Journal, Issue 11, Winter 2020

Perhaps a Peach 

What I recalled was carving words 
into the top of the antique pine table 
with a groundhog’s tooth, 
an odd object for defacing the surface 
on which we ate each meal. 

Why did this come to mind while reading Li-Young Lee? 
His poem about eating peaches, 
taking what we love inside us, 
so different from violating an heirloom 
with the incisor of a deceased beast, 
at that table meant as an altar of family communion, 
eating perhaps a peach, which for Lee, 
held within its skin days of ripening in the sun, joy. 
For us, mouthfuls of moist peach flesh, 
conveniently quashing speech. 

What do I remember of that ill-treated table, 
other than my abuse of it, 
other than mutely eaten meals, 
our family its veneer, 
me breaking the hush with a rodent’s cuspid? 
O, silence in need of sound. 

Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. 

Published in River Heron Review Issue 4.1, Winter 2021 

 Nomenclature 
after Roger Bonair-Agard 

In the language of childhood, 
my name meant dark purple lilacs,
horses, the smell of a barn. 
It meant the caress of grass on bare feet. 

My mother’s name meant sorrow, 
never whole, hard to breathe. 
My mother gave me my name, 
she meant to give me hers. 

My name means lovely in Scottish, 
in French, good. 
I no longer know my name. 
I no longer speak those languages. 

My mother taught me to talk 
with words for fear, worry, tears. 
She sang me lullabies 
in the language of her fractured lungs. 

In my language, my name means woman 
who whistles in the dark. 
It means truth buried in metaphor, 
light tinged with shadow. 

Published in HerWords, Vol. 1 Number 3, Fall 2020 

The Cherry Pit   

It must have been in November when she swallowed it, 
opting for the cherry pie as a respite 
from the pumpkin on every dessert tray of the season.  

That winter she sensed tendrils 
beginning to connect her to life again, 
felt more rooted than she had for she didn’t know how long. 

By spring her curls grew, vaguely at first, 
to resemble a crown of pink blossoms. 
She allowed their fragrance to breach her bitter edge. 

In summer came growth she couldn’t account for, 
a fullness, a leafing out, her head inhabited by nests, 
egg-filled. 

With fall, her heart swelled like ripe fruit,
and the fledglings returned to feast 
on bright crimson berries. 

Published in Heron Tree Vol. 7, August 2020

Longevity

(After Kay Ryan) 

Sorrow makes 
a habit of itself. 
Meaning 
tears escape 
no matter 
how often 
you dry them. 
Meaning 
memories intrude 
no matter how far 
you try to push 
them away, 
no matter 
how often 
you try to shut down 
the heart, 
how many times 
you turn the pictures 
to the wall, 
close the albums 
after pulling out  
that single photo, 
to test what 
aloneness can endure. 

(After Kay Ryan, ”That Will to Divest” in The Best of It, Grove Press, 2010) 

Second Place Winner, Short Free Verse, Arizona Poetry Society Annual Contest, 2020 

Published in Sandcutters, 2020 

Boxes 

Black, tin, with Tole-painted flowers, 
the container had lived on his dresser 
as long as I can remember,  
its contents unknown to us children, 
though we were sure it concealed treasure. 

After he died, the box came to me. 
Its top distorted from years of use, 
I wrested it open to discover 
safety pins, pencil stubs, 
buttons lost from long-ago shirts. 

We have them don’t we? 
Boxes of life’s relics, tokens 
real or imagined, worthless or worthy 
that we pick up and dust now and then, 
to reassure ourselves.  

After Laure-Anne Bosselaar, “Stamp Box” in Small Gods of Grief, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2001. 

Postcard from New York

How like me to think you’d keep that postcard—
that remembrance of a place we’d been together,
though, of course, the towers are missing
and I there missing you,
on a bench at a bus stop
on my way to The Met.
Perhaps I should have waited, sent a photo
of Seated Nude Holding a Flower,
that Miró painting you always loved,
when you loved me, then loved me not,
her ample flesh so yellow, pink and green,
and blue,
that tiny daisy resting on her knee,
its petals still intact.

Ref.: Seated Nude Holding a Flower, Joan Miró, 1917 on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery
Published in Coal Hill Review, Issue 29, Spring 2022



Self-Portrait as a Trout

How often I have played the part of this poor fish
skewered by a barbed hook it mistook
for something benign
lying here on this bloody board
mouth and gills opening and closing
tail still trying to rudder it to safety.
It’s no use.
My father wants to show me how to clean my catch.
His long fingers with their carefully tended nails
insert a sharp, pointed knife, deftly
into the belly of the fish, just behind the gills.
An unrepentant assassin, he draws the blade
swiftly back toward the tail.
Pale pink coils tumble onto the board.
He eases the flesh from the bone
then from the skin, produces two
perfect fillets he will dip into milk
dredge in flour
then fry in his favorite pan
hanging above us from an iron hook.
Still, I watch for barbs.

Published in Coal Hill Review, Issue 29, Spring 2022