Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia works tirelessly on behalf of emerging poets, so I’m lucky they included my poem, on the Demolition of a Casino in New Jersey, in this anthology along with pieces by Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Jonathan Pessant, David Radavich. Their voices sound like hope to me. A path that I can follow away from all of the discord as I sit here dreaming of French bakeries and French cafes and French food. I’m certain that it all goes together, or that it should, and liberty, equality, and community work better on a happy stomach. People seeing the value […]
I suppose that now his reputation will be shot since he could not find a more appropriate object of his love than one of his own sex, or else we won’t acknowledge it of him, that he inclined that way, we’ll say it was a lifestyle, this love that made him incandescent in his mother tongue, and taught him how to speak like no one else has done. This poem was first published by editor Ruchi Acharya in Wingless Dreamer’s Shakespeare of Today anthology. It was written as a statement about oppression, where even the most lauded figure in […]
What an honor to be named the winner of the first ever annual poetry contest at House Journal, featuring monthly selections online like “tree, the editor,” by Rucker Manley. Their mission statement involves poetry that evokes a sense of place, of home and of the people who live there, and I think I gave them that in this poem. K-pop Kabuki was inspired by a dream, or should I say, the person in this dream, who seemed so memorable that he wanted me to write about him. It happened in two parts, where I was first introduced to him, and […]
Happy to be headlining High Shelf XXXV, that gorgeous imprint of Cathexis Northwest Press founded by C. M. Tollefson ad Monet Sutch, filled with haunting images by Thomas Oscar Miles, Kris Casey, Ali Headley, and many more, I can’t look away.
I’m so grateful to the editors of Sepia Quarterly for selecting my work to appear in their beautiful anthology, which they crafted with the expert assistance of photographer Monique Islam. I could not have found a more perfect image than the one she chose to accompany my work. Happy to appear alongside the likes of Matthew Wallenstein, Melissa Greene, d.e. fulford, Robin Kinzer, to name a few. So many hands contributed to the making of this poem, and I’m particularly grateful to one editor who believed in it so much that she included a couple lines of critique along with […]
Editor Maya Highland regularly curates a selection of micro poems for the Closed Eye Open, where she was kind enough to include a sample of my recent silliness. What fun!
So exciting arriving in Paris and then receiving notice that I would appear in the Fall 2022 edition of Peatsmoke Journal, hard to say which I enjoyed more, publishing along with a sumptuous collage by Alison Cimmet that was almost as radiant as the City of Light itself, joining talented poets Katherine Gaffney, Natalie Marino, Evan J. Massey, C.J. Scruton, Julia Neumann, and Josie Levin. Working with these accomplished editors, including Wendy Elizabeth Wallace and Bess Cooley, was an unforgettable experience and I benefitted so much from their kindness and generosity throughout, including a nomination for the Pushcart! This was […]
The whirlwind of creativity that is Wild Roof Journal made room for one of my poems in a recent edition. Respect to editor Aaron Lelito for his encouragement and kind words!
A couple things stand out for me about Homecoming. First of all, that it got picked up by visionary editor Vijay R. Nathan for volume four of Nine Cloud Journal/Releasing the Mandala, which he dedicated to inner healing. Right before that happened, I subbed the poem for some feedback from a person who hated everything about this poem. Their critique was so brutal and over-the-top that I set it aside. The only change I made, following my own instincts rather than their critique, was to convert the poem into a prose format. I’d been reading some prose poems that I […]
I could not have found a better home for these two poems than the daring burst of light, sound, color, print that is Half and One under Babatdor Dkhar & friends.
The Writer on the Steps of Walter Library is a poem with a weird history. Initially an insightful [I thought] attempt at describing an otherworldly incident that occurred in my college days that nobody wanted to publish, at some point it inexplicably splintered into all sorts of interesting verbal shards of strange stuff that is still nonetheless viewed through the prism of this library. Ironically, I think it also became much more insightful. One of those moments where you think, “Oh, this must be what it feels like writing poetry?” Seems like it was immediately picked up by the folks […]
“This body prophesied transfiguration,” jayy dodd testifies in The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (2019), the book she says she wrote to save her own life. Described as a blxk trans womxn, creative, and educator, dodd tapped Narcissus to illuminate her transition between worlds demarcated by gender, race, and class. “Beamed down in Los Angeles ‘92,” she recalls elsewhere, to a family of preachers and musicians and a black poet lesbian mother raised on the backs of slaves and sharecroppers, dodd wrestled with her identity at a Connecticut boarding school and at Tufts, blinded to herself by the elite of skinny […]
Poems Demolition of a Casino in New Jersey | Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité Shakespeare was in love . . . with a man | Shakespeare of Today K-pop Kabuki | House Journal A place where sparrows live | High Shelf XXXV Cinéma Cernunnos | Nostalgia Lol | Closed Eye Open All the Gay Poets Go Extinct | Peatsmoke Journal Poem for a New School | Wild Roof Journal Homecoming | Nine Cloud Journal Four Square and Seven Years From N/O/W, 26 | Half and One The Writer on the Steps of Walter Library | Red Noise Collective |