Some of my poems or links to them. Many have appeared in on-line journals.
The two newest works-in-progress are ode to my bowls and light.
Here’s the link to the latest poem I have on-line: https://blueheronreview.com/bhr-issue-20-fall-2025/
poem
Under the poem
there is a feeling.
Under the feeling
there is another poem.
ode to my bowls
I have a favorite bowl for oatmeal
and another for pasta dinners
a different bowl for making cakes
a tiny striped one for grated parmesan
there's the cereal bowl with grapes
a thin Japanese one, blue outside and oyster flesh within
my grandmother's midnight fiestaware
the celadon monkey dish
the turquoise dragonfly bowl that Kate made
each bowl holds more than what it holds
I wonder about all the broken bowls
I've survived in this life
and wonder about the memories I've lost
with each one
there is a perfection in a bowl
the feel of the curve
the cool peace of pottery
the way each one fits into the other
Have you been to Barcelona and seen Gaudí's Sagrada Familia? Yes to Barcelona, for me, but no to the inside of the cathedral. I was planning on going this year but went to the hospital instead. However, we gave our tickets to a friend and she sent back photos. So light is an ekphrastic poem. Maybe some day...
light
she sends photos from the Sagrada Familia
(consecrated by the Pope just this week
parenthetical as the people who must be on the floor of the cathedral
out of the pictures, almost
as if
Gaudi had pictured this space for himself and God
alone)
the light is green is yellow is orange is
air
the space is new and old
the outside grown, not built
above whiteness as tethered stars
or angel wings
why is there even a 20th Century cathedral
when so much of this space must be
unfilled faith
breath trying to break out
into the column bonelike riblike more like tendons or
what opens and closes valves for arteries in the beating
heart
she sends pictures but they are more
an MRI of a soul
projected into cold material
accessible for a fee,
reserved online,
paid public entrance not part of the design
intelligent
or not
people line up
to see the light
Another poem about something exterior linked to something interior--this is from my Oregon days. Warhol seems a long way from the Chihuahuan desert in southern New Mexico, but why not?
I thought I didn’t like Andy Warhol’s art until one rainy day at the Portland Book Fair, I took refuge in the Portland Art Museum. The Warhol exhibit changed my mind. Give art a try in person. It’s different. Let him read his prints to you face to face.
On happening into a Warhol exhibit and being unwillingly moved
beauty spot
Mao Monroe
blown up
power
sex
desire
for everyone
who wants
more
electric chair ad campaigns selling
us
to us
the picture maker
duplicated reduplicated
whereverywhere
that image
examines itself
in itself
in itself
a white wig
a polaroid life
a heart pumping
copies of itself
into an unclosed system
blood
flooding
the factory floor
everything not the poem chipped away even the poem just the fall breeze cool cottonwoods flirting with the sun
