"The Modigliani Daughter" performed at an Open Mic Night

Children, Church & Daddies, the magazine that published my poem, "The Modigliani Daughter," read it aloud at an open mic night in Chicago last weekend. You can watch it on youtube at this link.  Mine is the first one read after the intro.  It's neat to hear someone else read it aloud!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7OX1Suq_LU&feature=youtu.be

The Fortune Cookie

He didn’t know there was a fortune

Inside the cookie

His stomach busy coding the message

Eating away at the letters

Into an unreadable form

To know his fate was clearly stated

In his hands just minutes earlier

Is maddening

What choice does he have now

But to live in the moment

As if his fate was never determined

The truth lying deep in his gut.

Published in Ascent Aspirations. October 2013. Online
http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/thefortunecookie.htm,
and first published in Bear Creek Haiku. June 2013. Print.

Interview

My new friend and writer, Bryn Gribben, recently published an interview of me on her blog, This Gemlike Flame, as part of a series she calls, "Why Can’t I Be You?: Great Women I Admire, Qualities I Don’t Have." 

Check it out here: 
Interview 1: Carrie Simpson

Blood Poppy

She slices me with her paper wings.

It’s deafening, her piercing the virgin green

popping azure skies with her incarnadine.

She’s Pluto’s puppet, I am sure,

Proserpina’s pomegranate 

bleeding through the grass

pleading with me, a sea skimmer, 

a skipping stone tempted by the wine-dark;

the slope to the abyss curls and unfurls,

a dying fiddlehead inviting us to slide, 

to drip with Dali’s clock into the dark.

Pricked, I follow her figure with my eyes,

roots melded to the underworld,

slender body bending with supple grass,

finale of carbuncle. I fear 

a piece of red glass plummeting

unnoticed, a speck of dust to Neptune,

polished to pitch dark death.

Stay above ground! she screams in silence,

stares me down with her charcoal chasm.

We are atop this color wheel of Fortune now!

First published in Third Wednesday.  Fall 2012, Vol. 4, Issue 4. Print.

Honorable Mention in Emerging Writer's Contest at a new literary magazine: HOT STREET

2013 Emerging Writer’s Contest:

We are pleased to announce the winners of the first annual Hot Street Emerging Writer’s Contest. The winner in fiction is Hillary Stringer for “Coasters.” Honorable Mentions in fiction go to Louise Kantro, Michael Votta, Evan Chavez, and John Poblocki. The winner in poetry is Michael Gray for “Forever 21″ and “For the Luggage X-Ray Machine at Fresno Yosemite International Airport.” Honorable Mentions go to Mary Bass Poulin, Caroline N. Simpson, and Christina Garofalo. The winner in nonfiction is Nancy Roach for “Cherry Crisp.” Honorable Mention in nonfiction goes to Genevieve Tyrrell.

HOT STREET is a biannual print magazine publishing intellectually and aesthetically provocative works of contemporary art and literature. It doesn’t matter to us if you’re new to the block or if you’ve been around awhile, if you’re traditional or experimental. We’re seeking literary fiction and nonfiction under 8,000 words that moves and transforms, pushes boundaries, and expands awareness. 

http://hotstreet.org/streetwise/

The Cypress Swamp

Beneath our feet, a dense hot tea

steeps in the cypress canopy.

Each plant signed the limestone print,

rust colored remnants of identity.

Tannins swim above waved sand,

keepers of heartwood eternity.

First published in Bear Creek Haiku.  June 2013.  Print and online.

http://bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com/2013/04/grace-uncertain-dignitypoet-caroline-n.html

Old Age

Old age is like being totally confused most of the time

except when a synapse in your brain fires a tune 

to which you once lindy hopped back in the fifties,

and you smile and dance by yourself in your chair,

catching the eye of whatever stranger is near,

laughing together as if she were there, too.

First published in Bear Creek Haiku. June 2013.  Print and online.

http://bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com/2013/04/grace-uncertain-dignitypoet-caroline-n.html