Published Poems, Press, and Practice Poems.
Poems on this page often move between draft and published. You’ll see a book cover when a poem is published and part of a print collection. When poems are removed, they go to my workshop with other draft poems to be posted on this site later, or it is in the workshop to be published in my next collection. Posting poems on this site helps me view them in a new light. Generally, poems move through significant revision (though folks who write poetry often never tell you as such) to reach their potential. In a way, it’s like a different music set list for my inspirational occasions.
In This Moment
It’s not like you’ve only been writing poems. You’ve had to write
many essays, emails, texts, tweets, and letters to others over the years.
Poem A
What a bother, right? You
Put all of your effort into a
Poem and nobody reads it.
Poem B
What’s the equivalent of a gym rat
In poetry? Each night, your last book
Before bed is often on how to work out
Seekers of Power
Under the weight of a shoe,
old ash is underfoot.
It is coal black and exhausted.
In the distance, direct flames
The News: An Elegy
Have you heard? All the news
is broken. All the new colors are burnt
shades of yellow from newspapers in disarray.
Anything made or powered by the politics of politeness
In the Wilderness
bottles of hard cider in the afternoon sun swing orange
streams of light on the hinges of our family reunion and potluck
Trail Between Dreams
I’ll follow shaded, Western redcedar spices in the air and get caught
by a fixed-weight, summer hammock woven-memories leader,
Body of Water
Shaded, burnt trees and grey grass marked off
black buzzards of different sizes. I turned my back
Recipes of Coos River
I saw the river current of your life run up a creek
and chase the greeting call of a hummingbird.
Eyes Closed, I Dream
City crowds can move smoothly as threads through silk.
Buildings rise to heights even light dares to tread. Ask the dead.
Silt and Mud
Time is a log raft behind a smoking face.
It is a sight around the corner of a river
on a slip-and-fall summer day.
Turning the Gravel
You drove down the driveway,
the tires turning the gravel.
Your heart is scraps of lumber,
splitting mauls, and chicken wire.
Erode the Sky
I infuse dreams in the land.
They become real when they leave my lungs.
The air becomes more like me.
I become more like dust.
Moss-Threaded Possibilities
Stories settle into the evergreen
leaves with moss-threaded possibilities.
They layer below the November
Walking Away
“Don’t fall in love with the land,” he told my father,
Little Blue Door
There you go again out the front door.
The one you once called your own.
The little blue door on a little winding road
that welcomed you home. Until this morning,
Only You Can Say
You said the word “no” for the first time today.
You turned down one more sip of milk.
A sentiment you shared without words before in so many wordless ways—
On the River We Float II
The river we float has a pace
beyond the town’s prepared embrace,
as our untempered souls regale in
the submerged acknowledgments as life
Open Doors and Windows
I hear music in the mountains.
I recognize the grip of gravel.
Music
To enchantingly ease and soothe regrets
From the highest past joys lost”