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Thank you to Red Wing Arts for selecting my poem "If There Are Aliens" for their 2025 juried Poet Artist Collaboration. I had the pleasure of seeing my poem displayed in the annual Poet Artist Collaboration exhibit today at the Red Wing Arts Gallery in Red Wing, Minnesota alongside the accompanying art piece created by Leah Monson inspired by the poem.

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Carl Phillips, "Fixed Shadow, Moving Water", Then the War: New and Selected Poems [ID'd]

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"Questionnaire" - Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred. 3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy. 4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without. 5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.

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The Glimmering Room, Cynthia Cruz

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4.45, Lev St. Valentine

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My Brother

I’m watching my brother grow old,

I’m watching his moustache turn grey,

I’m seeing the man

that I might become

one day.

-GeorgeFilip

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Let it come down: these thicknesses of air have long enough walled love away from love; stillness has hardened until words despair of their high leaps and kisses shut themselves back into wishing. Crippled lovers lie against a weather which holds out on them, waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry, some screaming cat that smells a sacrifice and spells them thunder. Start the mumbling lips, syllable by monotonous syllable, that wash away the sullen griefs of love and drown out knowledge of an ancient war— o, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain, let love be brought to ignorance again.

A Prayer for Rain by Lisel Mueller

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"I Close My Eyes When I Listen to Poetry," Amy MacLennan

People notice. But I still close my eyes in class, at readings. The table legs, scarred floors, cups of coffee get in the way, almost blur the words. Even the light is too much. I don't want to see you, poet speaking from the books, poet of the open mike. Not your fingertip scanning down the page, not your mouth. I want to be your mouth, in the dark, your tongue between our lips, the liquid l's and r's, a fricative fin that inverted kiss. I wait for your keening words, your aching words, first spoken with no one else there, sounds of animal or infant, fragmented, green, pawed through and kept. Still naked. And when you pause, I breathe as you do, leaning toward the air in your throat, your projected wanting, your final line.

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"Should You Go First," Albert K. Rowswell

Should you go first and I remain —To walk the road alone, I'll live in memory's garden, dear, —With happy days we've known. In Spring I'll watch for roses red —When fades the lilac blue, In early Fall when brown leaves call —I'll catch a glimpse of you.

Should you go first and I remain —For battles to be fought, Each thing you've touched along the way —Will be a hallowed spot. I'll hear your voice, I'll see your smile, —Though blindly I may grope, The memory of your helping hand —Will buoy me on with hope.

Should you go first and I remain —To finish with the scroll, No length'ning shadows shall creep in —To make this life seem droll. We've known so much of happiness, —We've had our cup of joy And memory is one gift of God —That death cannot destroy.

Should you go first and I remain, —One thing I'd have you do; Walk slowly down that long, lone path, —For soon I'll follow you. I'll want to know each step you take —That I may walk the same. For someday, down that lonely road, —You'll hear me call your name.

Should you go first and I remain —To walk the road alone, I'll live in memory's garden, dear, —With happy days we've known. In Spring I'll watch for roses red —When fades the lilac blue, In early Fall when brown leaves call —I'll catch a glimpse of you.

Should you go first and I remain —For battles to be fought, Each thing you've touched along the way —Will be a hallowed spot. I'll hear your voice, I'll see your smile, —Though blindly I may grope, The memory of your helping hand —Will buoy me on with hope.

Should you go first and I remain —To finish with the scroll, No length'ning shadows shall creep in —To make this life seem droll. We've known so much of happiness, —We've had our cup of joy And memory is one gift of God —That death cannot destroy.

Should you go first and I remain, —One thing I'd have you do; Walk slowly down that long, lone path, —For soon I'll follow you. I'll want to know each step you take —That I may walk the same. For someday, down that lonely road, —You'll hear me call your name.

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"When You Go," Edwin Morgan

When you go, if you go, and I should want to die, there's nothing I'd be saved by more than the time you fell asleep in my arms in a trust so gentle I let the darkening room drink up the evening, till rest, or the new rain lightly roused you awake. I asked if you head the rain in your dream and half dreaming still you only said, I love you.

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"If the month of June was your friend," hannahrowrites

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"Love is love," Loryn Brantz

Is love Is love Is all the love Do not deny Anyone who loves Their love It's love It's love It's all Fucking Love

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"What Kind of Man," Kate Baer

What kind of man weeps at the feet of his wife in pain, holds up the pink and shrieking thing and feels the throb of time. What kind of man wraps a cloth around his waist and holds the baby to his chest, walks through the streets swaying like a drunk in morning. What kind of man feels the rage of men and only swallows at his daughter's fists at his chest. What kind of man does not give up his time, his many pleasures , but hands them over without a sound. What kind of man bends to hold them in their suffering, in their questions, in their garbled turns of phrase. What kind of man admits his failures, turns over his heavy stones, stands at the feet of grief and wanting and does not turn away. What kind of man becomes a father. A lasting place. A steady ship inside a tireless storm.

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"Apostrophe," Liza Katz Duncan

Ocean, every so often, a kitchen tile or child's toy rises from you, years after the hurricane's passed.

This time, the disaster was somewhere else. The disaster was always somewhere else, until it wasn't.

Punctuation of the morning after: comma between red sky and sailors' warning, white space where a storm cloud lowers.

Where the bay breaks away, the sentence ends: a waning crescent of peninsula, barely visible

but for the broken buildings, the ambulance lights. Ocean, even now, even shaken, you hold the memory

of words, of worlds that failed slowly, then all at once. A flotilla of gulls falls onto you, mourners draped in slate.

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"Sister," Nicole Tong

Forget about smoking weed                 with soccer players in the woods                                 near the Methodist church

while I said Hail Marys                 and kept watch. Shifted my weight from hip                                  to hip as if to ask, Is this attractive?

Waited for feedback                 from the shadows. Forget Mom and Dad,                                  you’d say. They’re some kind of crazy.

We repacked bags with the seasons.                 Buried them in the backs of our closets.                                  Clothing and essentials in case.

Thought one morning I’d find you                 long gone since                                  ours was a house of exits.

But when, in my sixteenth year, you watched                 my slight frame get smaller                                  as the car pulled away

from the boarding school parking lot,                 I knew what you knew: the difference                                  between not speaking and letting something go

unspoken. Between what actually happened                 and the mythologies we tell our husbands decades                                  later. We say, Mom wigged out. We don’t say

the institution’s name. We can’t say,                 That was the year we saw Dad pull the trigger.                                  I said, You’re such a bitch

when I meant Remember.                 You were there.                                  You walked beside me each day.

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"People I Envy the Most," Jess Smith

Easy sleepers, especially on planes.

Parents who enjoy pregnancy.

Anyone meeting my father for the first time because that’s the best of him you’re going to get.

Men who have been inside me. (I am the kind of person I would like to fuck.) 

Homeowners with elaborate Halloween decorations. 

Champagne flute women wearing satin robes who wake up hungry and proceed to eat breakfast.

The dead who know our secrets.

Not doctors but actors who play doctors.

Cobble Hill Dads.

Anyone in silk without sweat circles. 

Myself at 28 who worried more about which soup had secret dairy than if she would survive. 

The man next to me on this flight who is sleeping soundly. 

We curl toward each other like long-married lovers, his mask slipping just enough for me to recognize his soft mouth.

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"The Mountain is Holding Out," Paul Muldoon

The mountain is holding out for news from the sea and the raid on the redoubt. The plain wont level with me

for news from the sea is harder and harder to find. The plain won’t level with me now it’s non-aligned

and harder and harder to find. The forest won’t fill me in now it, too, is non-aligned and its patience wearing thin.

The forest won’t fill me in nor the lake confess to its patience wearing thin. I’d no more try to second guess

why the lake would confess to its regard for its own sheen, no more try to second guess why the river won’t come clean

on its regard for its own sheen than why you and I’ve faced off across a ditch. For the river not coming clean is only one of the issues on which

you and I’ve faced off across a ditch and the raid on the redoubt only one of the issues on which the mountain is holding out.