My In-titled Poem (inspired by Ross Gay), “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” has finally found its home among the lovely pages of New Feathers Anthology! I’m grateful to EIC Wade Fox for selecting it for publication in the winter 2025 issue. Despite this poem being my all-time record-holder (probably twice over!) for number of rejections received at 47 whoppers, it still happens to be a personal favorite, which I’m ever so pleased and proud to share with you now…
https://www.facebook.com/share/1EQD7HewV4/
I had the distinct pleasure of joining Katherine Heiss of Brick Street Poetry on the Off the Bricks Poetry Podcast to read and discuss a few poems from my newest poetry collection, We Have Seen the Corn, available for order online at Kelsay Books and Amazon.
Have a listen and enjoy!
Thank you Pleiades editors Jenny Molberg and Caitlin Cowan for selecting my In-titled Poem, “Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia,” for inclusion in the beautiful SPRING 2024 issue’s Special Folio: On Disability, ed. by Olivia Ellisor and Kennedy Horton.
I’d like to express my gratitude to poet-, editor-, and human-extraordinaire Catherine Strisik for including my poem, “Message in a Bottle to Arthur Sze,” in the gorgeous new issue (issue 13) of Taos Journal of Poetry. I’m thrilled for this chance to share my poem with you, and deeply honored that it now resides amongst such gloriously earnest, inspired company…
“Woolly Howl” by Cameren Harper
My poem “Awakening” is now live in issue 17 of the fabulous online journal, Panoply! I’m immensely grateful to editors Jeff Santosuosso, Andrea Walker, and Ryn Holmes for selecting this piece, and for their passion and impeccable professionalism as promoters of poetry and Poet-kind!
Cephalopod
I know how you tried to befuddle me
with that ten-legged head of yours—
how you thought you’d streak by
& ink me blind, but I see
how it is: I mean, once your penetrating-
obsidian eyes shone the ocean alive,
that cute little stunt of tucking back
your longest tentacles, as if you could
pass for being one of the girls, almost
like innocuous, trifling, bipedal me,
was glaringly obvious. I know your beak
was really poised from the start to strike—
to take my breath into your breath,
& crack open my sternum, & feast
on the still-thudding muscle inside me—
because motoring between my mere
two legs, primed to be torpedoed
with your mantle, until I tauten
like a caecum gorged on tiger prawns,
is the same jet-propulsion as yours
worked in reverse…
“Cephalopod” recently languished on a short list for an inordinate amount of time — poor guy — before ultimately being rejected, so I’ve just decided to share him!
My poem, “Psychedelic,” is enjoying some lovely company during this week’s installment of Poetry Wednesday at Prometheus Dreaming! Thank you to editor David van den Berg for selecting this piece.
Pressing into the Depths
of an old-growth oak grove on your search for virgin peat having naturally preemptively considered the human calcaneus poised on its subcutaneous fat pad (the sturdy lovechild as it were of evolution & bipedal ambulation); you go whole-soled knowing nature engenders no freaks & that the point of weight-bearing actually is to sink-spring to life your very own rooted upward mobility—to elapse your mossy quiet’s once upon a time into cantilevered boom to mushroom & split your bark like a seething green superhero (who leaves you in tatters) harden yourself new gnarls to gather lichens & ever after phosphoresce the midnight fog like a moonbeam striking your cast-off glass slipper
“Pressing into the Depths” was published in the November 2018 peaceCenterbooks anthology, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace, edited by d ellis phelps.
No muse per se whispers
infusions into my burning ear
not that it would be in my nature
to entice some demigoddess to swell
with lust hover about my head
& grace me with facility in the arts
such that I might woo hearts into believing
in my sanctity (as if I’d ever assent
to some covetous little bitch’s attempts
to trademark my own voluptuous
intellect with her dousings of silvery
moonbeams & purple pixie dust)
which isn’t to say that no one ever garners my tribute
No of course not for there’s always been a certain monsieur:
Arnos namesake of the Neoliths’ river to move to flow
mounting pulse to culminating flutter
his flux of rapture & cruelty
rising like a god in me
“Tribute” was published in the Fall 2017 edition of Harbinger Asylum. Thank you to editor Dustin Pickering and guest-editor Z. M. Wise for selecting this piece.
Steph, poet, & Sydney, cattle dog extraordinaire!
Thank you so much to editor D. Ellis Phelps of Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press for hosting my poems, “Risen” and “Instead,” at formidableWoman, and for making me feel like a celebrity with her warm, insightful introduction!
Browse D.’s wonderful site here: Formidable Woman Sanctuary
Also, check out these terrific submissions opportunities here: Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press
“Instead” appears in my new chapbook, This Being Done, which will be available for pre-publication order TOMORROW, February 26, 2018, through April 27, 2018, at Finishing Line Press. I will post the link to order as soon as it goes live! Stay tuned for further announcements throughout the next couple of months!
SLHARPERPOETRY 