Humans Naming Trees, in Salamander

 Just discovered that my poem "Humans Naming Trees," which appeared in Issue 49 of Salamander, is featured on their website as a sample poem from that issue. Enjoy!

Burning Down the House

 New poem in Radar, alongside the work of poets such as Meghan Sterling, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Heidi Seaborn, Sarah Dickenson Snyder, Chelsea Dingman, and more! Each poem is paired with artwork, except for mine which is paired with a video clip of my actual childhood home burning to the ground. 

Comma

 Pamela Alexander:

Commas   by Miller Oberman

Came home and found my typewriter
case a little crushed it’s my fault
probably for leaving it looking like
a stepping stone for someone not tall
enough to climb onto the toy chest
but who very much likes to clamber
up there my father built the toy chest
for me and now the result is my comma
key sticks won’t fly up to make its mark
so no more clauses of that tender
kind or just imagine them there or figure
out how to use a semicolon or type the word
comma when I need one lots of things
are called commas not just punctuation
a certain butterfly a bacillus responsible for cholera
the chest’s nails are slowly withdrawing I notice
pulling themselves out in the invisible
hammerclaw of time or else the wood itself’s
ejecting them feeling maybe hey it’s been long
enough let me just be planks again or it could
be the climbing itself did I also climb
and all that climbing’s worked
against those nails a little each time after
my father held one in his hand one in his
mouth and with his hammer made a box

Comma by Diane Seuss

To never be touched again. That line
has a sound. Hear it?
I don’t want to bring a story
to it. Not even an image.
It has a sound. Listen.

To never be touched. Oh, a nurse,
a doctor, but never to be touched in that way.
You know what way. Listen.
Hear it. Let’s not tag it with a feeling.
Give me a break. What possible song

would you play when you toss my ashes,
someone once asked me.
There is no song, he said. Don’t
narrativize, Diane. Don’t narrativize Diane.
See what a comma can do?

Treelines Reading

Friends in the Concord, MA area, the Concord Center for the Visual Arts will be hosting an in-person reading to celebrate the launch of the new Grayson Books anthology Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems on April 29th from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. What better way to celebrate Arbor Day?!

I have a poem in the anthology but won't be at the reading, for obvious reasons. If you can make it, there will be some great poets reading. It's a free event, masks required. More information, including exact location and names of readers, here.

Treelines

Friends, I'm pleased beyond words to have a poem included in the new Grayson Books anthology Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems, edited by Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant. Look at that luminary lineup of poets! Some of the proceeds from sales will be donated to a cause dear to me, the National Park Service Foundation. Here's a little information:

Just in time for Earth Day and Arbor Day, Grayson Books has published Tree Lines: 21^st Century American Poems, an anthology that includes work from 130 contemporary poets, including U.S. Poet Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and other outstanding writers. The poems launch conversations about our tender, fierce, and awed relationship to trees in cities and forests, in orchards and open fields. This important new collection reflects contemporary American poets’ heightened awareness of place, close observation of nature, and concern for the earth’s changing climate. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to the National Park Service Foundation.

Edited by poets Jennifer Barber, Jessica Greenbaum, and Fred Marchant, the anthology includes poems by Ellen Bass, Jaswinder Bolina, Victoria Chang, Anthony Cody, Toi Derricotte, Camille T. Dungy, Ross Gay, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Major Jackson, Fady Joudah, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ted Kooser, Ada Limón, Esther Lin, Philip Metres, D. Nurkse, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Linda Pastan, Kay Ryan, Evie Shockley, Vijay Seshadri, Tracy K. Smith, Arthur Sze, Natasha Trethewey, Rosanna Warren, Afaa M. Weaver, and Javier Zamora, among others. Published on Earth Day, Tree Lines is a collection to treasure.