Admiration II

Anatomical Angel                                    by Averill Curdy

L’ange Anatomique, by Jacques-Fabien Gautier Dagoty, 1746

                        Unfastened avidly from each ivory button

          of her spine, the voluntary muscles open

virtuosities of red: Cinnabar

                        the mutagen, and carmine from cochineal

          born between fog and frost, so many little

deaths Buddhists refuse to wear

                        robes soaked in its thousands. Sunsets

          of other centuries fade in galleries to ash. 

Red is fugitive: As the voice, the blow

                        of gravity along a nerve opening to an ache

          the body can’t unhouse: As the carnation

suffusing cheek and haunch like saucers

                        from the king’s porcelain rinsed in candlelight.

          Gratuitous as the curl, the urn-shaped torso,

the pensive, brimming gaze of pretty

                        post-coital thought she half-turns over one

          excavated shoulder. As if to see herself

in a mirror’s savage theater as elegy

                        to the attempt to fill an exhausted form,

          to learn again the old ordeals of wound

and hand and eye. To find the source of burning. 

Admiration I

This is a poem I admire. I wish I could tell you which book it came from; at this moment I cannot.

High Country Canticle                                                by Charles Wright

The shroud has no pockets, the northern Italians say.
Let go, live your life,
the grave has no sunny corners —
Deadfall and windfall, the aphoristic undertow
Of high water, deep snow in the hills,
Everything's benediction, bright wingrush of grace.

Spring moves through the late May heat
as though someone were poling it.

New Book News

I am thankful and excited to announce that Whiteout, the manuscript about my uncle who died climbing Denali, the manuscript I've been working on for the past few years, will be published by the University of Alaska Press in July 2017.

This is the perfect fit of press and manuscript--the people a the University of Alaska understand so well the background incidents and accidents that this book is based on, and have firsthand knowledge of the climate and weather that made the storm that devastated the expedition--I couldn't be more grateful to Peggy Shumaker, Amy Simpson, Laura Walker, Krista West, and everyone else over at the press who have helped me along this process.

Stay tuned for developments.

Hunger No More

Have you wanted to read Hunger Mountain's Body Issue, which was previously out only in print?Well, hunger no more. That special issue is now available online, including my poem 'Theories of Flow' (which appears in my manuscript Whiteout). There are also poems by Frannie Lindsay, Joel Brouwer, francine j. harris, and more Frannie Lindsay. Plus others. Check out this controversial issue (controversial because of the artwork and cover).

Nominated by DMQ

I'm thrilled to announce that the poem 'Across a Crevasse, My Uncle' from my manuscript Whiteout has been nominated for the Best of the Net by DMQ Review editors Sally Ashton, Mary Donnelly, Anne Doe Overstreet, & Marta Svea. I am honored and humbled.