Poetry
Previously published in print or online
Desire
3rd Place in York Poetry Prize
Judged by Sean O’Brien
I stepped outside the chapel and stood
beside a bush, lit
the wandering mind’s synapses
with my last cigarette.
You walked out the door behind me;
I could feel the catch of breath
hanging in between us–
I turned, you smiled and left
me pondering how the eyes will
settle on the soul’s desire.
And then each leaf stood on its branch
and spoke in tongues of fire.
Sonnet for Joan Little
Honorable Mention in Craven Arts Council Ekphrastic Poetry Contest 2020
Judged by Jaki Shelton Green
Leaning into the wind on his everlasting wings,
a swan blows his trumpet down the Pamlico;
inside the county jail, a young girl wipes her nose
and shivers at the sound of keys rattling on their ring.
The jailer enters, nightstick black against his clean
starched shirt, palming a pick for shards of ice—“You owe
me this”—the pick falls loose, he grunts; the spreading blood soaks
his shirt. She flees as fast as stone from a sling.
Murder was added to the charges; when caught, she stood
to hear the story of how she intentionally seduced
him; the prowling swan patrolled along the rainy docks.
As the cell slammed shut, and the jury retired, she prayed,
“Leda of the ripped-up jeans, deliver those refusing
the gaze and grip; deliver us from men and gods.”
Christ of the Great Plains
First published on Catholic Poetry Room
I believe that Jesus died out in Nebraska.
We nailed him to the only tree we had,
while the Devil in the main
car of the Kansas City train
blew that whistle, blew it till it drove me mad.
No one ever sees the face of God the Father,
blue and lonesome as the bare and empty sky;
But He makes His presence known
riding in upon a storm
and whips your heels, till there’s nowhere left to hide.
And I do believe I felt the Holy Spirit
just a-burnin’ and a-blazin’ in the wind–
the summer dries out your tongue,
and the winter burns your lungs;
and it numbs your lips and strips off all your skin.
And I believe that I might jump in the Missouri;
only the cottonwoods will see me as I go.
And the next place I’ll be seen
is somewhere down near New Orleans–
to pour my sins like oil on the Gulf of Mexico.
Church Road, Plattsmouth, Nebraska
Published in Beyond the Walls 2019, Valley Press
I did not love you till
I read Willa Cather twice describe
your skies and fields as sheet-tin,
hard brittle rattling and gray as god
riding down from Canada
on the winter wind and
fraying corn-stalk fibers
until they split--
my skin split, too, like the glass in our front door
and my joints turned ashen and they ached.
A mile away, across the Union Pacific line,
a creek, and up the slow slope
to Arlo Cole’s seed farm,
was a telephone pole, tall and barren
as a roadside
Pentecostal cross.
we always had a snow just prior to Christmas,
and most years, an ice storm
that left the moonlit fields glowing
with the shattered glory of fallen starlight.
On New Year’s Eve, I would walk that mile,
and then the second mile back,
to burn my lungs with the bone-dry air,
and burden it with clouds.