For today, delighted to be chosen for publication by the Mill Valley Literary Review. Look for it this spring. And you can see my first poem, Fire and Fury, up there now.
And to be included in the Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Here is the poem that appears there, first published in Gyroscope this year.
Woman
her World on Skids
Paused
at the red light, I see her —
Urban
traveler at a crossroads,
waiting
out the light
weighted
by her world on skids behind her
Arms
bent back holding the plastic
reins
of flattened cardboard
bearing
the world —
not
aloft as Atlas —
but
on folded boxes that can be opened
into
shelter,
black
plastic bags, the heavy kind
for
cramming every bit of trash
you
clear from your property
before
you move in or everything
you
call your own
as
you move out
In
her bags she has crammed husband
House,
children now grown, job
in
a bank or a store
or
a factory in another state
nice
clothes or rags
an
apartment, tenement, old folks’ home
crazy
house
the
faraway lap of ocean
on
foreign shore
wing
of white bird soaring
I
watch her adjust the weight, knuckling
gnarled
hands into locked grip
Bearing
the more private, the more precious, cargo
on
her bent back not a bit
of
slack in sinewy limbs, face taut as a fist, eyes
tight
against unforgiving sun, not an ounce of wanting
to
be here but with steadiness
because
after all, she is moving
if
not quite upright, at least, not quite
prone,
and with purpose
As
the light changes.
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