little ditch

My chapbook about a teenage girl who excavates her agency from internalized misogyny, rape culture, & sexual abuse is now available from Rob McLennan’s above/ground press. 

from ammonite sonnet

the ammonite an index of sutures
i got tired of cataloging them
hermetically sealing little traumas
afraid they’d get to know one another go boom
little mother catastrophes instead
i smashed little rocks to bits in a ditch
each shard a memory released pressure
from stomach the common burial ground
the cavity of accumulation
each little box coated in dust and feelings
each glass stone chamber not really secret
i get ready to shatter the discretions
i open my palms no explosions no pain
coalesce little traumas wrap your wounds
around each other a chrysalis blood
a becoming of feathers of air a fire

Invasive Species

Four of my Anne Rice erasures were published in FIVE 2 ONE: An Art and Literary Journal’s #thesideshow yesterday. There’s audio too if you want to hear my weirdo voice. Thanks for listening…

11/30: Poetry Walk

 

Why do certain shrubs smell like pee

Capitalism

The father of desire

His face a white light

We fall into it

or die trying

 

 

3/30: chalcedony

 

chalcedony

the gentle subtlety of true light breaks

arrests then aggregates radiating

how the glow extends to us despite our faults

 

crystal life system your gap symmetry a balance of victories

moss agate, the nacreous imagine, stalactite, a petrified wood for lovers

how you hover as forms

in the interstices

 

warrior, queen

your magnanimity

a wonder seeking air

 

 

2/30: Aurostibite

 

Aurostibite

 

i’m not radioactive

there’s a horizon over my grimace

lead grey no gammas protuberant teeth

the sonogram catches my gravity

 

diploidal i’m a star symbol a fracture among the shimmer

my crystal system two Ty fighters on the wind

a metallic streak

 

Au get off my diaphaneity

What I lack in sulfur I make up in cell dimension

666 – mark of the beast

Good luck finding my cleavage

 

 

1/30: rock beach

 

rock beach

we dig for ancestors

of, relating to, or tending those hard, dark rocks

opaque in their soliloquies always why me why me why

we coax time from their celestial bodies

our instruments gaining measure in the

massive bed of (p)latitudes

 

 

 

every once in a while it goes the other way too

Feeling rich with poetry gems right now (which is great cos we’re broke & the world at large is feeling more friable than ever). You write these poems & wonder where they came from & then sometimes they are published in great journals like Vector & Flag+Void who are great to work with, & have consistently been producing interesting work for years. This past week saw the release of my poems in both of those journals simultaneously. Amazing.  (Copies are available at the links provided.)

In other poetry news – after much planning, I’ve gone ahead & started a new reading series for teens and adults at the Library. We will meet every other month & feature a visiting poet, followed by an open mic. While funds are limited, I have a modest budget for paying performers, & am currently seeking grants as well. I’ll be releasing an open call for submissions soon – so please write me if you know a poet that would like to be considered. Here’s a write-up the local paper did of our first reading in the series featuring MK Chavez!

The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is also still open for chapbook submissions through August 1st so send some work our way!:

Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange
Open Reading Submission Period: June 1st – August 1st

The Poetry Center invites emerging and established poets to submit work to the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. The PCCE is a community-curated chapbook archive created in 2010, by poets recommending other poets using an each one-invite one model. See http://poetrychapbooks.omeka.net
We aim to provide and maintain open access to small-press and out-of-print chapbooks to promote readership of contemporary poetry as well as encourage its value and availability for use as free, educational, teaching resources.
Send us your work that plays, sings, risks, interrogates, provokes, and moves beyond.

Guidelines:
Length: 10-40 pages
Currency: New work (written within the last 5 years); published work that’s fallen out of print.
Aesthetics: seeking a range of forms, approaches, hybrids.
There is no reading fee.
Please email submissions to chapbookexchange@gmail.com.

 

Hope you’re all well & finding some strength in poetry.