Pushcart prize nomination!
Thank you to Troy Urquhart at Willows Wept Review for nominating my poem “The Appearance of Plenty” for the 2023 Pushcart Prize!
Earth Science and The Appearance of Plenty in Willows Wept Review
“Earth Science” and “The Appearance of Plenty” in Willows Wept Review!
Dead Horse Bay and One of Those Guys
Do not walk barefoot here.
The sand is strewn with glass.
Ruinous and inchoate at once, the shoreline recedes
toward Rockaway. March. Wind
spits rain at the ocean’s face.
Gulls hover in a landward breeze. At the edge of the beach,
above the tide’s limit, seven-foot tall reeds form a cane-break,
dry, brittle, soughing. I have entered
a flowerbed of bones.
Starch Factory Creek
Our own private ritual, these long walks in bad weather.
The two of us, talking over the cataract of air,
go up and down crooked staircases
built into the creek-carved hills.
The park is empty, except for us,
eerie in the wind and autumn light.
The fresh snow.
Nineteen Orchard Street
Above me, I hear my grandfather’s footsteps.
The way he keeps going back and forth makes me wonder
if he is looking for something,
or if he too is counting seconds—
not forward through time, but over and over,
the same seconds, uncertain
of his math, uncertain
if the sum of years balances.
Inheritance
If people ask, where do you come from?
I answer, from the spilled flour inside a kitchen cabinet,
from the vines left after their tomatoes are picked.
The autumn sun belongs to me, tucked under the horizon,