Poetry...

We asked the captain what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast,
so large, so terrifying, and unpredictable. He hesitated to answer,
and then said judiciously, “I think I shall praise it.”
 
Robert Haas, Praise.

I'm thrilled to have won an Honorable Mention with the Council of Wisconsin Writers' 2022 Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. The award is given to the best collection of up to five poems published in literary magazines by a Wisconsin-based writer in the previous year. And it comes with a one week residency at the Painted Forest. A first for me! Here's what the judge, Leslie Monsour wrote:

"Lora Keller's skillful ease with a wide range of subjects is a pleasure. Her intuitive language and refreshing insightfulness cast unexpectedly revealing and fascinating brilliance on topics as diverse as sexual discovery, a warehouse of drinking fountains, a snake molting and the process of cleaning a freshly caught fish, so unrelentingly precise and beautiful in description, it is nothing short of an awakening."

You can find the five poems I submitted -- Winter Lives of Bubblers, My First Orgasm, My First Blue Gill, Snake Molting and Fluid Dynamics -- below. Thanks to my friend, Annette Valeo, for the photo!

Poem in new Ariel Anthology. A virtual reading was held November 2021 to honor the issue. Two water walkers from the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa led off the event and Dash Kelly Hamilton, Wisconsin's Poet Laureate, closed it. Wonderful!

Here is the poem that won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry's 2021 Triad Contest. It also is live on WFOP's homepage https://www.wfop.org/welcome:

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. 

Here are the two poems I read at the Art as Poetry 2021 sponsored by The Lakeshore Artist Guild and Basil Ishkabibble's Art Gallery, both of Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

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.


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.

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

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Art+Lit Lab (ALL) out of Madison published one of my poems online in 2021. 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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"Fluid Dynamics" appeared in 2021's Sheltering with Poems. I also read it 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/ And here's a link to an article about the anthology in The Capitol Times: https://tinyurl.com/86mnzpc4

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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