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Parenting
Total Solar
We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.
August 2023The Normal Force
The waiting room was mostly full of pregnant women that day, and then there were the rest of us. It made me feel sorry for the ultrasound techs, who must spend their days bouncing back and forth between rooms with babies and rooms with not babies.
July 2023The Only Ones
Poems About Parents
I failed at wisdom, nurture, / nature, separation, and calm. / I excelled at role model, if what / you wanted was wretched.
— from “Old Mom,” by Jessica Barksdale
What my father didn’t know when he drove / ten-year-old me in the bed of his pickup truck / to gun shows & shooting ranges, initiating me / into the art of the hunt, was that he was actually / teaching me how to write poems
— from “Portrait Of The Poet As A Child,” by Elizabeth Knapp
In my memories my godfather towers / over me, his deep baritone thundering / above us as we sing hymns during Sunday / service.
— from “Small,” by Courtney LeBlanc
My brother calls to say he’ll meet us / for lunch in a few hours, not to wait for him / if he’s late. He’s got to pick up Mom. / And though the crematorium / is near our hotel, he’ll take her ashes home / first.
— from “Waiting In Cars,” by Jackleen Holton
July 2023Dating Profile
What’s on my mind lately: How to survive the winter alone with a roaming catamount who needs a snack. I asked advice from the guy who plows our driveway. “What should I do if I see it?” He stuck his head out of the truck window: “Don’t act like food.”
March 2023The Patron Saint Of Traffic Lights
My child is in the backseat with her mother / and can’t understand what’s happening, / keeps forgetting we’ve already told her / that she fainted and hit her head hard / on our living room’s stone floor
February 2023Selected Poems
My son and I are sitting on his back porch, / early October, the gold locust leaves above his barn / giving the morning light something to shine in. / An unfelt breeze makes itself known / when the leaflets shake and shimmer.
— from “The Last Day, Again”
February 2023Captain’s Log
7:17 — Wife yells, Oh, God, look! Dusk now, harder to see. What? I say. Bear! she says. To right, where riverbank gives way to pasture, large beast lurks in shadow of tree. Dark, terrible beast, now moving slightly toward us. Large, dark beast says, Moooo.
February 2023Sins Of The Mother
Although I still identify as a Christian, I am endlessly unpacking and discarding the church teachings of my childhood. My belief in God is no longer built on the fear of what will happen to me after I die.
January 2023