Poetry...

 Here are the two poems I read at the Art as Poetry sponsored by The Lakeshore Artist Guild and Basil Ishkabibble's Art Gallery, both of Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Urban Archaeology
 
Where buckled alley meets
their building’s bristled skirt
of plaster, two boys idle
 
and rummage in windswept bits
of twig, steel wool, if lucky,
a fresh wishbone, a gnawed
 
and knuckled drumstick – gadgets
to scour and scratch into
the foundation’s grizzled
 
concrete crust until
mortar scatters to bare
peony and ivy,
 
sky and cloud. Fossils
of color. Secrets
of stone.


My First Blue Gill
 
His thumb on the silver skirt
of her tail, dad scrapes
her skin with the tip
of his bowie knife,
the whitewashed dock
sequinned with fish scales.
 
He squares his blade
at the base of her skull
where her gills pulse
and in one bloodless
steel flash he cleaves
her head from her body.
 
Then he slits the seam
of her belly, one palm flat
against her muscled ribs.
Her intestines unspool
as his fingers angle
inside her pale flesh.
 
He plunges her
in the shallows
for a final rinse,
a wreathe
of her viscera
circles his wrist.
 
Then he unfolds her
as if her spine
is the liquid thorax
of a butterfly and she
now is nothing
but wings.



And here are a couple photos of the gig...

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Here is the poem that won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry's 2021 Triad Contest:

My First Orgasm
 
Before we tip any vinyl albums
from their cardboard sleeves,
our dance coach demands
100 sit ups.
 
Basketballs tut next door. 
Another coach bellows.
I cradle my skull
in my palms
 
and fold myself
into myself,
a gardener absorbed
in upending pots,
 
guiding tendrils to root,
to climb. When I’m almost
done, I feel a nudge
like a cat’s paw.
 
In my top-secret self.
The self I barely know. 
Then a pounce
and a tussle.
 
Then. Petals rush
from every
thorny
nerve.
 
The dancer
who weights
my feet says,
My turn. 

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Art+Lit Lab (ALL) out of Madison published one of my poems online. Such a very fine organization. Go here to read my poem, "Snake Molting," on line as well as other wonderful poets' work! https://artlitlab.org/all-review/snake-molting

Snake Molting
 
The itch starts at her eyes
and sweeps down the pulsing
muscle of her body. 
 
She swells and shimmies
around fossil-pocked boulders,
silvered driftwood.
 
When she can’t find a bristled
surface, she loops into her own
strained and crusty flesh  
 
and peels
herself
from herself.
 
She’s a single-limbed ballerina
tugging off her tights,
a wrinkled pool
 
of inside-out skin
coiled beside her,
traces of grass and beetle grub
 
still etched in its grooves,
her quaking spine sealed
in the gauze of new skin.

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My poem in "Sheltering with Poems" is on the left. On the right, is Kimberly Blaeser's poem. She's a former Poet Laureate and a former teacher of mine. I read both of them for Art + Lit Lab's July 2021 Virtual Watershed Reading. Here's a link to the entire reading (I'm the second poet to read at about 7:50 on the timeline):  https://fb.watch/v/2-kjpoF0b/

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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