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Seeding Art
 
To map the microorganisms living in New York City's subway, researchers swabbed turnstiles, handrails, doors and poles and then classified each sample. They found genetic material from thousands of species, many unclassified. No two subway stations were exactly the same. “The bottom of a person’s shoe might represent the 'genetic history' of that person’s daily or weekly travels.” -- Cell Systems
 
Invisible germs of modern art
breed in each epidermal ridge
and valley of my palms,
 
each rubber groove of my oxblood
Doc Martens as I drift MOMA's
white labyrinth.
 
So when I lumber down
the subway’s concrete steps
blistered with old bubble gum,
  
I seed each silver-toothed turnstile,
each elbowed handrail,
with Van Gogh's skies
 
spangled with dandelion stars,
his fields furrowed
with Cyprus.
 
I’m a gypsy grizzly bear 
transporting a whole alpine
forest in my scat, my sweat. 
 
Berries clumped
in the ruts of my soles
spurt their ruby ink.
 
No amount of soap
or paint can douse
the crimson tattoos
 
which may either
protect me
or get me killed.

A Good Reason
 
A murder of crows dismantles
my ancient lilac bush. The twisted trunk
jerks as they yank lavender buds
from its new branches still freckled
with green. Why are they muscling
 
meals from this elderly shrub and not
from fresh road-worked entrails?
I want to shoo their gangster wings,
mute their ruptured calls, thrash
their bully ways. As if reading my mind,
 
they skutter and hop to a snarled scaffold
of twigs perched in the highest whorl
of heart-shaped leaves. There, they needle
those kernels of spring fragrance into
a nest. A nest!
 
Even the haughty great uncles, with their mantles
of oily black feathers, hustle sweet scents
for the young. Then they embroider the buds
into the nest like amethyst jewels on a quilt
of dried grass and helicopter seed pods.
 
This exquisite cradle.
Rocked by wind, warmed
by a mother’s skin, lit by splinters
of sun and moon 
and lilac stars.
 
 
 

 
 

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Selected works on-line

Motherhood poems
http://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2016/09/an-army-of-one.html

Child-rearing poems:
http://www.versewisconsin.org/Issue112/poems/keller.html

Power poems:
http://www.booksbywomen.org/whenwomenwaken/author/lhttp://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2016/09/an-army-of-one.htmlorakeller/

Obsession poems:
http://lanternjournal.org/2013/03/please-stand-back/

A snake poem and more:
http://original-writer.com/gettingpoetrypublished56lora.html

The Beauty of Life:
http://www.halfwaydownthestairs.net/index.php?action=view&id=411

A fishing poem:
http://www.thenewpoet.com/2013/05/the-new-poet-5.html

Story poems:
http://www.blastfurnacepress.com/2012/11/blast-furnace-volume-2-issue-3.html

Poems about callings:
http://www.med-lit.vcu.edu/MLM2.2.pdf