To any new followers... and I have a new book out (sorta)!

Welcome to my oft-neglected blog!  Feel free to peruse some of my past postings on the right, as well as visit my shutterfly page if you like photography as well.  I've lately been really busy with work and school stuff (see previous post), so the blog has fallen into disrepair, a bit, but I will try to be posting more and more new (and old) poetry when I can find the time.

In the meantime, I have had the honor to be one of 14 featured poets in Silver Birch Press' newest chapbook collection, Swallow Dance!  It is an incredible book from an outstanding, up-and-coming independent publisher, and I highly suggest you check it out.  Honestly, I feel in the shadows of giants in the company of these high-caliber poets.  Find it on Silver Birch's website here, or if you think you're ready to buy (please support the press- I don't get any money for this, it's all about the art), you can get it from Amazon here.

My personal contribution is called "Four Years in Pocket Change."  I am proud of these poems- they were rescued from a series of small, pocket notebooks that were written during a very tumultuous time in my youth, then edited and re-edited.  I think I've done well capturing that "younger me" voice while incorporating a lot of what I've learned about good poetry since then.  The book is divided into 3 short segments: Words, Movements, and Pictures.  Enjoy the introductory poem below:

Words, Movements, Pictures

Each word is a vision:

blue skies and oceans full of surging waves.

Each movement of the lip, each singular motion

is a staccato thought,

ripe with blood and living breath

and seems to suggest

newness.  Freshness.

And despite our wishes well,

each word will cost

a thousand and one most precious coins of thought.

She is a broken cathedral,

pillars cracked,

vast and beautiful and distant.

Intoxicating…

In her cool airs,

in the smattering of violets that spring

from the most casual of her glances,

I find a moment’s rest from thought.

In the quiet that follows,

I wonder if that is good enough.

If that is worth a mistake.