Monday, October 30, 2017

The 2017 Art Farm Anthology

For two weeks this past August-September, I was a resident at Art Farm in Marquette, NE. While there, I worked on revising poems and assembling a chapbook manuscript, which I completed and have since sent off to several presses. 

In the meantime, Five Oaks Press, edited by 2017 Art Farm resident Lynn Houston, recently published an anthology of the work of 2017 Art Farm residents. My poem, "Unnamable Voices," was published in this anthology alongside an illustration I did of one of the farmhouses on the property. 




Unnamable Voices 

I spent entire dinners imagining
the white of our house 
inhaling and exhaling
broken glass
candy wrappers
fallen feathers.

A shiver would pass through me
a strange gentle wind 
in the house like a chorus
like a breath of souls 
in worn mountains
crawling up thunderstorms

the wind on my neck
a current ruffling the swallows
stirring unnamable voices
old forgotten songs 
glorious under the eaves.


"Unnamable Voices," in a different form, was originally published by Two Cities Review in December 2014, and is a found poem created from Paul Harding's Tinkers (2010, Bellevue Literary Press).

Pictures of my time at Art Farm:











Thursday, October 5, 2017

Seasick

She wasn’t prepared for how her body
would deceive her
how her own flesh would be so quick
to give away
hunger meant to feed her soul.
We underestimate
the undertow of the universe
how it pulls
our corporeal thingness far from shore
            to the primordial
so that we may swirl below surface
with life first arose
and how small we are in the company
 of such a force.
Her body succumbs to exhaustion
deforms, feels pain
as the new life gains presence, strengthens
takes shape.
It must feed off her and she must submit
to the current
let it do with her what it will
bob with the nausea
trust she will stay afloat in this space
where her body
is not hers and the being not complete
that time will

one day wash ashore two wholes.




First published: ESME, 12 Sept 2017. Web.