---

My New Fountain Pen
 
I love how the ink hugs his guts
until the nib meets the earth
and the earth says “go.”
 
How he’s more decisive
than a ballpoint – when he’s empty,
he’s empty.
 
How one sip
at the well
replenishes.
 
How he tenders
smiles at the end
of each word.
 
How he doesn’t need
friction to solve
my problems.
 
How he lets me guide
his perfect weight and
the river inside him.
 
How, if I'm not careful,
I wear his blood
for days.


Escape Velocity
 
Invisible as air,
as love, gravity
yanks everything
back to earth.
Balls. Rockets.
Me.
 
I expected your weight
to tether me like that.
But you let go.
One slingshot spasm  
and then the slap
of sky.

Grandma's Lake
 
Her lake was really a river,
a damned up branch
of the Fox. Locks at both ends
trapped its goulash of algae
 
and paper mill sludge and maybe,
everyone’s worst fear, sewage. 
Even the fish wanted out,
throwing themselves
 
onto the shore’s jagged
clods of concrete.  Our mothers
shrieked when they caught us
squatting over rotted corpses,
 
nudging stiff gills and vacant
eyes with slivers of driftwood. 
But, from where Grandma’s breath
condensed on the inside
 
of her bay window,
sunlight skimmed
the clefts and crags
of the water’s ragged
 
surface, stippled glass
glazed silver.
 

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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