I'm thrilled to have three poems featured in the Fall 2022 issue of the Monterey Poetry Review, alongside the talented poet and friend Diane Frank. Diane is also the chief editor of Blue Light Press, the publisher of my poetry collection Every Glittering Chimera, a collection inspired by that mythic female monster that tells the story of being a woman in America.
Among my poems in the new issue of the Monterey Poetry Review is one that I wrote last autumn, “Brief Passage,” on a retreat in Asheville, NC. It was a productive time creatively that saw the start of several poems and paintings, some of which I've shared previously on this blog.
Below is a relatively new poem featured in the Monterey Poetry Review.
TRYING TO BE STRONG
First light beams the sky into the room,
marine blue flecked with frilly amber clouds,
The yellow-green of the Umbrella Pine,
Hinoki Cypress molting.
Thick hedge, white Montauk Daisies,
buds flowering along the pebble path.
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus,
a print I bought years ago in Venice,
hangs near my desk.
Later, in waning day,
dusk between the dream out there and now
armed with a notebook and my Fitbit,
I walk the road down to the beach,
imagine Venus emerging from her clamshell,
a quarter mile away in Gardiner’s Bay,
where this strip of skinny land
meets the sea’s portrayal of infinity and beauty,
sparking dainty ruffled whitecaps on the inlet.
Imagine RBG’s white tatted collars
folding and unfolding, mirrored in the froth,
playing in the waning light of sunset’s red reflections.
Click through to read my other poems and the rest of this amazing issue.