My Publications

Angel or Demon?

—a haibun in winter

We exited the elevator at the medical center and suddenly, he was
upon us like a zone-tailed hawk. Don’t I know you? Where are you
from? I know you. Do you remember me? He never let up, his gold-
tooth smile as inviting as the shiny foil of a wedding invitation.
You don’t recognize me ‘cause I’ve been taking chemo, he said,
pulling out a driver’s license that pictured a full-faced male
of forty-years much different from the frail, gray-bearded,
man now asking for money. I need forty dollars for my co-pay.
I am to pick it up at the pharmacy at First and Third after my chemo
at 1:00. Could you help me? If you can’t, I get it, man. I understand.
I see my husband, reaching for his wallet. The skinny,
unkempt man with the golden smile extends his leathery hand
and bows, his ragged, faded-red scarf almost touching the ground.
Thank you. God bless.

As he springs toward the elevator, we turn to our car, certain—
well, ninety percent certain—we had been duped by the devil.
But what of that ten percent uncertainty, those what-if questions
dogging our psyches, wreaking havoc with our hearts. What if
we had just conversed with an angel, come face-to-face
with God?

In our winters, wisdom,
too, takes on gray skies.

Published Heart of Flesh Literary Magazine, 2024

 —with Seamus Heaney’s definition of hope

Winter is the soul shrinking
like the last orange in the lead-glass
fruit bowl on the kitchen counter, and
it’s the scattering of stale bread
on the hard brown ground
for the robin who might come
hop, hop, hopping along. Winter is
stumpy, snow-laden rose bushes, perpetual
alabaster loneliness. Look everywhere
and see abandoned carts and wagons,
winter taking hold like burnt motor oil
on a mangy mutt. Listen closely
to winter’s death rattle in the corn husks
in barn rafters, in the sunken chests
of old men, in the start-ups
of rusty, old pick-up trucks.
But then look to the swell of the grapevine,
the glacier’s groan, the sap oozing
from the pine. Smell the moss, the mold,
the rot when the earth starts to stir
from her sleep. Feel the heart
frolicking like a white-tailed deer
even when the creek is dry. Spring is
the quickening of life. It’s a brightening,
like memories over time. Spring is hope…
something rooted in the conviction
that there is good worth waiting for.

Published in Georgia Poetry Society’s Reach of Song, 2024; photo by author

You’re Still the One

—after Shania Twain’s song by the same title.

who breaks out in song though you only remember
a phrase or two, and you’re still the one who riffs

the opening verse of House of the Rising Sun
on the guitar that’s been part of the basement décor

for over fifty years. You still retain your beautiful
square shoulders where your girl’s head has fit perfectly

for five decades, though the blade these days is sharper
and more prominent. You still get your thrill

from the antics of Carol Burnett and Tim Conway,
and like them, you are not afraid to be silly, like

when you made a video to thank doctors and nurses
and prayer warriors for support during your month-long

stay in the transplant unit, saline bags hung to your ears
as you Elvised Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. 

You still love vanilla ice cream. You still allow your forty-
year-old daughter to dance on your now hammer-toed

and blue-veined neuropathied feet. You are still the one
who hangs curtains for the girl who nearly abandoned you

after that same task a half century ago, and you are still
the one who makes a detour to the bedroom on your way

to work in early morning to pull the covers over her shoulders
and kiss her goodbye like that gesture could be the last time

to tell her she’s still the one.

Poem Published by Poets On Line, Sept. 2024; written to prompt “The Last Time”
Photo by Nadia Sitova on Unsplash

-after George Ella Lyons

I am from tenant farmers,
from mules and corn-filled wagons.
I am from swamp and river-
muddy, rushing, speaking life.
I am from cotton bloom and boll,
representing work and survival,
from burlap sack and scale,
the gin that mined the seeds.
I am from lard and side meat,
from feed-sack dresses and Singer machines.
I am from storytellers and a porch culture,
from “Y’all come” and “What ails you?”
I am from peanut-boilings and cane-grindings,
from hog-killings and sweet tea.
I am’from dreams and prophecies and Holy Ghost fire.
I’m from foot tub and outhouse,
from Sears and Roebuck catalogues and homemade lye soap.
I’m from turpentine cups and bleeding pine trees,
from Daddy’s back  plasters and Mama’s rough hands.
I’m from fruzzy television and static radio,
from memories, sun-washed and weathered
like a rusty Cadillac de Ville.

Originally published in Fire 2021
Photo:  Trisha Downing/Unsplash

—after C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory and
Gustav Klint’s Longing for Happiness (Austria) 1901

Happiness is toasted marshmellows, coconut
macaroons, oily macadamia nuts and Paris
rain. Front porch swings, putty in a child’s hands,
icy moon drops, and soft jazz.  Happiness is harp
strings at Christmas, the cypress tree stretching
on the river’s muddy banks. It’s a terry cloth
robe at evening, a hot bath, an answered
prayer.

But we know macaroons don’t last, do they,
nor does rain, sun and moon, and soft jazz.
Cypress trees lose their leaves in late autumn,
and bath water quickly turns cold. Perhaps
the thing is not that which matters the most,
but the longing, the yearning, the want. It is
the desire for breaking news, for the far-off
country, for that long-expected someone
of our dreams. It’s the ache for beauty
we have yet to experience, the scent
of a flower we have not [yet discovered],
the echo of a tune we have not [yet] heard.

Published: Ekphrastic Review, Aug 2024

Some things never leave you,
like the taste of strawberries
in summer. Like your father
saying you thought yourself
the Queen of Sheba and a few
years later escorting you down
the rose-petaled aisle as if
you were. Like the swaddled
and wonder-eyed innocence,
peaking at you from under
the warm pink blanket at 5:07
the afternoon of April Fool’s
in ’82, her blood-tinged hair
a mid-summer night’s dream,
and wavy, like a washboard.
Like Galanda’s Pink Madonna,
mother and child skin to skin,
the forever-sweet scent
of their tender embrace. And
how do you forget a spouse’s
unrelenting silence, lonely,
like mulled-wine shadows,
when his tiny dancer trades
her lighthearted-tinge-of-pink
leotards and flamingo-pink tutu
for long white veil and bridal gown.

Published: Ekphrastic Review, Aug. 2024 as part of the Tickled Pink challenge.

Artwork: Mikuláš Galanda’s  Pink Madonna, 1933

	—after Joyce Sutphen and Thomas Lux

Because he got twice the money and his name in the paper,
he would pick two hundred pounds of cotton per day to have
the first bale ginned in the county. Because years later 

he would pass a field of white and say, I’d like to get out there
in that. Because he was good the old way. Because he was 
a horse whisperer, gifted at taming wild horses. Once he bought

two paints when the train came through town, and then wrestled 
them home, tussling with them through the pines, grappling
with them in ditches—at times, bottom upwards—at last gaining 

their trust and earning their support to make his corn and cotton
crops that year. Because he could plow a straight row by using 
the mules’ ears as a compass. Because he worked too hard.

Because he was a pig farmer, good at picking out a good frame
at the hog sale. Because he could sing one verse of one song, 
Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? Because he could

give a good haircut to the little one pitching a fit under his scissors. 
Because he doctored his feverous children with Vicks Salve and 
Mentholatum, encouraged their health with a little sody water and

Coker Colers. Because he was always broke. Because he took pride 
in mending his fences, perturbed when he saw his teenage son 
sloppying up the job. Because he wanted pretty bundles of kindling

for Mama’s cooking, bundles stacked neatly like his worry. Because
he was known for the best coon dog in the county. Because he would
cut a cotton stalk to use on a recalcitrant child. Because he used it.

Because he sacrificed, considered himself the least among the brethren—
if he went hunting with you, he gave you the best birds and kept
the mangled, shot-up ones for himself. Because he had a thing for food, 

wanted bread, meat and grease on his table in and out of season. Because 
he rode in an airplane only once in his life. Because he was good
the old way.

Published: Verse-Virtual, 2024

Here’s to the unexpected, the surprises
that come our way—the Christmas card 
that arrives on the Ides of March, the rain 
burst on a sky-blue summer day, a poem
that births itself in minutes at the coffee shop.
Here’s to the unexpected— the music
of blackbirds ribboning in the heavens,
controlled and chaotic like Stravinsky’s Rite
of Spring; the beauty in a mound of soft butter,
alluring, sensual, evoking images of warm, 
freshly-baked bread smeared in creamy delight; 
and truth birthed from questions like those
of the brooding and unless-I-see Thomas 
after the resurrection of his friend. 
Here’s to this one fleeting life, its magic, 
its commonplace, its mundane, its divine, 
its brief hours, so unexpected, the light waning,
to our surprise.

 Published: Verse-Virtual, Aug. 2024
 Photo by: Shakib Uzzaman at Unsplash

-to my husband, a week before stem cell transplant

Today we listen to Clapton’s melancholic rendition

of Autumn Leaves and remote our way through news

and weather channels to learn more about the fury

of Hurricane Ian in the gulf, keenly aware

of the ensuing winter and the suffering our flesh

is heir to. In a few short days, you, too, will weather

the biggest storm of your life, and I will be helpless

to do anything about it. We will batten down

for forty and more days and wait for the wind to die

down and the squalls to subside that we might send out

the raven and dove to test the receding waters.

Published in my second collection of poems, Come before Winter, 2024

We lie. Othello lied, Clinton and Nixon,
Jay Gatsby and King David, too, the results
often as consequential as today’s climate 
change. Babies fake-cry, and children blame
other children when they get into trouble.
We cheat on our spouses, we concoct 
elaborate hoaxes, we build fat Ponzi schemes,
sending investors to financial doom. We tell
bold-faced untruths with straight faces, 
using words as smooth as an Oreo’s fondant. 
We cover up, put on facades, pretend to be what
we are not. Like the Greeks tricking the Trojans
with the wooden horse. Like Judas betraying 
his master with a kiss. Like you feigning courage
as you hug family goodbye for an uncertain
season of sickness.

Published: Verse-Virtual, 2023