Happy New Year!

I have poems in three just-published journals -- Prick of the Spindle, Honey Land Review, and Jelly Bucket. Here's one from Jelly Bucket, written in response to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting last Jan. 8. The poem seems appropriate for the end of 2011, the beginning of what I hope is a better year for all.

WHAT TO DO

When the chief surgeon’s press conference has winnowed to soundbites
and splashes of flowers cover most of the spattered blood
and we’ve swayed unarmed in a circle holding hands while a piper skirls
and police have unwound the yellow tape from stanchions and bollards
and before it all starts up again

let there be a little space in time
like a clearing
let us wash and dry the dishes after supper
and put them all away

MacLeod a writer to watch for

If you want to know what it feels like—really feels like—to footrace a train through the Windsor tunnel or stack bricks in the sun until your sunburn oozes and bleeds, Alexander MacLeod has the imagination to take you there. If you want to know what it feels like to read his short stories, check out my review of Light Lifting at 360 Main Street.

My new book available for pre-order

My first collection of short fiction is due out in January. The publisher, Mayapple Press, is offering a 10 percent discount for early orders. Please support this outstanding small press by ordering a copy, and by purchasing some of the many other fine titles of fiction and poetry that Mayapple offers. Click the link above; then go to the "coming soon" link at the right.

'A Texan Reflects' in New Verse News

New Verse News, the current affairs poetry website, has picked up my poem, "A Texan Reflects on an Old Cemetery." Check out the site here.


A TEXAN REFLECTS
ON AN OLD CEMETERY

It's hard work running a lake,
commodifying water. Thousands of facts
sit in filing cabinets and hard-drives --
pumping costs, acre-foot allocations.
Dealing with them every day
you get into a routine of thinking
and hold your mouth a certain way,
and then seven years of drought
undoes it all. A forgotten cemetery
emerges along the shoreline,
water falling away like a gray blanket,
uncovering wooden coffins, bones
of former slaves, mostly children.
It’s as if they woke and rubbed
sand out of their eyes like sleep
and came down to the courthouse
to testify about a terrible crime,
and then, being children, tumbled out
among bird song and dry grass
to play a while in the free air.

New batch of lit magazine reviews

New Pages has fresh lit magazine reviews up on the site today, including pieces on Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, and my take on the latest Southwest Review. Check them out here.

'Picking Blueberries' at Gulf Stream

I'm very happy to have this poem in Gulf Stream Online No. 6. The magazine has been in business since 1989 and is associated with the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami. Check it out here.

PICKING BLUEBERRIES
We work apart,
each knowing by now
how the other does things.

I thumb berry from stem,
gather ten in hand to drop in a pail.
They’re clean, no need
to pick debris out later.

You grab ripe and red together,
leaves, stems, mummies and all,
fill three buckets to my two.
No one goes hungry
in your house.

At the slope-roofed shed,
morning haze just lifting now,
we stand before a girl working the counter
who weighs us out,
dumps everything together,
renewing our vows.