My Character Love Affair

I have an essay in Wild Ink Publishing about putting a character up a tree, falling in love with them, and getting them down.

Check it out! 

And pre-orders for BLACK RIVER open today. My main character isn't literally up a tree, only in hot water.

Or should I say cold?

Published by Unsolicited Press, the gutsy, small indie publisher from Portland, Oregon.  Available now for pre-order from Asterism Books, a boutique distributor with deep indie-bookstore relationships. Thanks for supporting me, Indie publishing, and independent bookstores everywhere!

THE BURNT HAND

In response to the prompt from Poets & Storytellers to write a personal message to the rest of humanity, the thing you'd most like to communicate, this collaborative poem does as good a job as any I could relay on my own.

THE BURNT HAND

smoke shrouded Quebec
singing sparrow doesn't sense         (yvonne)
her demise is near

burgers hissing on iron

dad wipes  his watering eyes            (david)

sleeves rolled elbows bowed

she reclaims her patch of green        (yvonne)

from desert's burnt hand

cracks in the sidewalks

dandelions pushing through              (david)

before getting sprayed

cut logs piled precision high

stumps remember touching sky       (yvonne)

Amazon clearing

gaps widen in canopy                          (david)

wingbeats fade away

The rengay is a form of linked verse consisting of six thematic verses collaborated by two or three poets with alternating 3 and 2-sentence stanzas. For The Burnt Hand I collaborated with David Bogomolny at The Skeptic's Kaddish.  It was his suggestion and encouragement that birthed this poem. See more, explanation and history behind the form Here!

Sunshine in the Cemetery

                                                                      Dark Matter is like the space                                                                                       between people                                                                                        -Tracy Smith "Life on Mars" 

This month is named for Mars, that bloodthristy Roman God of War and eponymous red planet, and this post is a tribute to Tracy Smith's "Life on Mars" the Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 2012.  Frank Tassone at dVerse, the Poet's Pub, has suggested we write a haibun in the spirit of Smith's extended elergy for her late father. 

She who taught me to set a table, make my bed, and say my prayers waits for spring with no complaint— the boys of summer—but another sore appeared on her ankle and she wonders aloud What will become of me? I’m still a child while she is here, when she is gone what will become of me?

Whirl of black wing through the trees. Watchful crows remember face. Red tulips match her dress and his bow tie. Easter finery, cemetery grass, soft and matted underfoot. Why not believe as Camus did that two can become reunited as one?

Vase of daffodils

Last a week when brought inside

Sunshine in a jar

The haibun form consists of one or two paragraphs of prose that evoke an experience followed by a haiku, nature based, that complements the prose.

Thanks Frank for the evocative prompt.