The Fall/Winter 2025 issue of Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine is live, with 4 poems from my forthcoming (really, but no date yet) book “idle, rough”:
a powerful pulsing
Holy, Holy
Morgan County Fairgrounds Racetrack
The wolf’s at the door so I say Come in
I even got a personal call out from the editor, who has been so encouraging and also a careful reader/proofreader!
I really loved the closing poem of the issue, “All Poetry is Prayer” by Stephen Turner
The amazing editorial team at Dark Matter: Women Witnessing have pulled together an anthology of work from their first 10 years. I have one poem in the anthology – there are 66 other amazing women writers.
Dreams Before Extinction is an anthology of essays, poems, and artwork by women in response to ecological devastation. The collection is comprised of works selected from the first 10 years of publication of the online journal Dark Matter: Women Witnessing (www.darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com). Sixty-seven authors from six countries have contributed to this anthology of 79 pieces, in 572 pages, grouped into nine sections: To Witness, Fired Anew, The Grammar of Animacy, What We Know in Our Bones, Songs of Undoing, I am Nothing Without My Dead, Healing with Land and Ancestors, The Music of Grief, and What it Takes to Breach. Edited by Lise Weil, Gillian Goslinga, Kristin Flyntz, and Anne Bergeron, this book is a moving and inspiring collection of written and visual responses drawing on dreams, visions and activism, all in the name of healing our broken relationship to the earth
It’s available from Ingram Spark or Bookshop.org
New poem up in the Climate Change issue of WordPeace. This poem is trying to find words for my grief when I first saw pictures of the Mighty Mississippi left only as dry river bed in summer drought. That river is nearly too big to imagine, and seeing it gone broke something in me.
Read it here: 1 Mississippi 2
Enjoy for the Holidays!
Based on readership
Two Poems by Matthew Ussia
Three Poems by Elliott batTzedek
Three Poems by Edward Lee
State of Treasures by Amy Barone
Two Poems by Jonie McIntire
Moonstone Arts Center, the publisher of my chapbooks of translations, hosts readings nearly every Wednesday upstairs at Fergie’s Pub in Center City Philadelphia. (up a long, steep flight of steps, so be forewarned). I’ll reading from the collection with two other poets that night; the readings are always followed by an open mic.
You can tune in over Zoom – click here at the start time.
Elliott batTzedek is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet/translator. Her work appears in: American Poetry Review, Massachusetts Review, Lilith, The Broadkill Review, Hole in the Head Review, Naugatuck River Review, and Hunger Mountain Review. Her chapbook the enkindled coal of my tongue was published in 2017 by Wicked Banshee Press. A chapbook of translations from the Israeli lesbian poet Shez, A Necklace of White Pearls, was published by Moonstone in July 2024.
Steve Burke has read at many venues in the Philly area; has two chapbooks published by Moonstone Press, with a third forthcoming shortly. He worked as an obstetrical nurse for 25 years; lives with wife Giselle in the Mount Airy section of the city.
Mabel Lee is a poet and educator from Philadelphia, where she participates in various literary groups and teaches middle school students. Most recently she has facilitated poetry workshops centering around the preservation of beloved neighborhoods and resistance against big development. She believes in the transformative and connective power of poetry within and across communities and language as a bridge towards knowing and helping others.
I’m pushing ahead with my new manuscript, which is up to 48 pages. I’ve sent it to a few places. Many presses require a minimum of 50 pages, so I have to find at least two more poems inside of the world of this collection. I’ll get there – just hope it is in time for August 31st deadlines.
These four poems are all from the manuscript. I’m particularly pleased with “Wedding Dance,” for keeping a tight structure, and “Ossuary,” for how in it I let myself go into pure association of word and sound. Many thanks to my post-Yetzirah monthly poetry group for showing me where this poem broke down – fixing it was a matter of moving two lines and then wow.
Ossuary
boy do I have a bone to pick with you, bones, so make
no bones about it but rather better bone up on it now
that you’re the rag and bone man, dancing a final
dog and pony show, throw me a bone, I’ll grab hold tight,
as if that were all my life is now, which is today’s
bone of contention
come look close then closer, to see what was bred
in my bones, yes we’ll dig for the bones in it, measure
the skeletons that skulk in my closet, and after give rest
to my weary bones
the doctor says: bones are covered by a thin layer of tissue called the periosteum
knick knack paddy whack the quickest dog
gets the fat off the bone, the slowest suckles
meal out of marrow while my bones
cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh—
about this, there are most surely no bones but
dem bones, dem dry dry bones
the doctor says: it is the nerves in the periosteum that “feel” bone pain
dying rot that is my bone closet, bitterest
closet where my boners were forced to hide, my want
as dry as a bone coat, mouth crammed so full of bone
dust and sawdust that I’ll never know the taste of what
the preacher said: the good is oft interred with their bones
the doctor says: and for this bone pain there is no remedy
oh tales of blood and bone, the talking bone,
the telling bone, rattling bones, tattling bones,
rolled them bones and took my chance
still Death it was got the bigger half
of my wishbone
fe fi foh fum
Death smells the blood of every one
and grinds their bones to make
his bread, here at bone idle, here
at bone dry, here where you can make
no bones about that
This Frenzy 