THE PRIEST RIVER SEQUENCE ~ IDAHO, Late NOVEMBER, 2025
Author: grandmamosespress
POET STALEY MAKES THE NEWS
I’m thankful Susan Moreé at The Las Cruces Bulletin took the time to write about my poetry micro press and my work with teenagers. Read the article.
NEW RELEASE: GILA WILDERNESS POETRY ANTHOLOGY
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Gila Wilderness, regional writers have
collected poetry, prose and photographs, to express their love of the Gila’s wild
natural beauty. The finished book, Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing
Cultures – A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures is now available for you to read and/or download for free.
The Gila Wilderness in southwest New Mexico is the world’s first designated
Wilderness. Established June 3, 1924, it is the remotest section of New Mexico’s
Gila National Forest, which comprises 3.3 million acres of wild, natural beauty.
U.S. Wilderness Areas are defined as “an area where the earth and community of
life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain.” Camping, hunting and fishing are allowed, but no roads, buildings,
logging, mining, or mechanized vehicles are permitted.
The idea of “wilderness” had long been a dream of conservationist Aldo Leopold
who, as a young man in the early 1900s, was one of the first U.S. Forest Service
rangers in the region. Lessons he learned during his tenure in New Mexico and
Arizona convinced him that some of America’s vast landscape needed to be
preserved from human commodification. Lobbying Congress with elegant essays
and insights, Leopold’s dream was realized with the preservation of the Gila
Wilderness area — a mountainous region of tall trees, majestic canyons and wild
rivers, once home to tribes of Chihene (Apache) people.
In fact, the name Gila comes from the Athabaskan word Xila (pronounced Chee-
lah), meaning ‘Red Clay Hands,’ the name some Chihene gave to their homeland.
Spanish speakers later rendered it as Gila, a homophone that carried the sound
but obscured the origin.
On Sept 13, 2025, several of the Gila Anthology contributors got together at the Black Range Lodge in Kingston, New Mexico, to share their work and celebrate their love of the Gila Wilderness. I was the MC of the event and had such an amazing day.
Here I am at the event with folk poet JOHNNY HUERTA (on right) and Santa Fe poet Josh Robbins (on left)
Thanks to UNM’s Dr. Michelle Kells and her team for making this Gila Anthology come together!
The whole GILA anthology is free to read online and/or download HERE.
3 top 10 poems
in high school, my drama teacher told me that I “march to the beat of a different drummer and that drummer is on a hill several towns away.”
this last year I’ve pushed through my typical self-pitting, sardonic, whiny and short-tempered poetic tendencies to find joy, light, laughter and silliness.
i’m so thankful to have found Jokes Review who continue to appreciate what I’m up to, read for yourself, three new joke poems.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY : The Monumental Bust of Lieutenant Colonel Staley
The Monumental Bust of Lieutenant Colonel Staley
Mrs. Lt. Col. Staley followed arrows
in the commissary aisles, armed
with her husband’s typed grocery list
replete with specific brands and weights.
Pregnant in Panama
while he was serving in Thailand
an art class for the wives
and when the directions were
don’t just look at your husband’s face; sculpt it!
She asked for more instructions
and for once there were none.
Creative license allowed her
to remove the mole, to lengthen the hair.
Cosmetic surgery via swipe
of a broken credit card
wattle thinned with a slash of wire.
He left the war in time to see
the ease in which she hollowed out his head
before carrying him to the oven.
ODE TO TEENAGERS
ODE TO TEENAGERS
Teenagers are terrible roommates but they’re unbroken.
Teenagers hear music with more emotional surface area
to their ears than adults.
Teenagers really hear you especially when it’s impossible
for them to hear you.
Today this poem is bursting sloppily out of me
because I’m happy with teenagers.
Teenagers get drunk, have sex and do drugs
but that’s not why I like them.
Teenagers write poems and spit sick bars into the mics I hand them,
into the mics the public library puts batteries in.
Teenagers in South Central New Mexico put the card in to the ATM of our hearts
because teenagers are concerned with banking.
Teenagers have little banks in their eyes
accepting deposits in all forms, in all smells,
deposits that tingle from your toes up your spine,
intimate deposits, teenagers might get uncomfortable
when a 50-year-old white man from Alabama
says “intimate deposits”.
Teenagers get driven to the poetry reading in a dark gray minivan by their girlfriend.
Teenagers take the night sky and slam it like freshly-squeezed prickly pear juice.
Teenagers work at Caliche’s, Rack Room Shoes and Sonic and are allergic to nuts
but don’t worry, all the nuts come in little baggies, teenagers probably don’t like
poems with nuts, especially deez-type nuts.
I have known 100 teenagers a year since 2001, how many teenagers is that? Infinity teenagers
is how many.
Teenagers do not watch Chicago Fire but do run in the middle of the night on sidewalks to city parks
like little flames matriculating into anything but smoke.
Teenagers wear jeans inside their brains, and sweatshirts inside their feet, in between
the tiny little foot bones, so many little bones wearing so many little sweatshirts.
Teenagers don’t mind when things get weird.
Teenagers know by heart: inside one tiny seed, a tree five stories tall.
Teenagers know the sun is setting.
Teenagers know the gate is locking. Teenagers will wait to slip behind someone
who knows the code coming in.
Teenagers are someone coming in, but I know they’ve been here all along,
like how the moon still exists even when we don’t see it, like how love
still floods these streets even though we don’t see it, like how the screams
of teenagers in poems, like how the screams of teenagers in Young Park,
like how the screams of teenagers ricochet against the void,
how the screams of teenagers return to us as screams of joy.
METAMODERN NON-FICTION?!
Poet Tim Staley is now a METAMODERN Non-Fiction writer? Who knew? Jokes Review knew all along. Thanks to Peter Clarke at JOKES REVIEW for continuing to be an advocate of my work. Here is my piece about how the lame TV show CHICAGO FIRE saves my marriage every Wednesday night.
APPLEPEAR IN THE NEWS
Yo, what a thrill to see ApplePear turn up in the news. Please enjoy this article about zine culture and what role my scented chapbook plays in that culture. The author of the article, Peter Clark, is the editor over at Jokes Review which has been an extremely important periodical in these modern times, or these METAMODERN Times, I should say.
There are no copies of APPLEPEAR remaining. Remember there were only 50 chapbooks scented, and the masters were destroyed in a semi-planned house fire.
SOLD OUT
RADIO INTERVIEW AND DISCUSSION WITH POET STALEY
Think Again: Tim Staley on Poetry
Recorded live in KTAL Studios on 3/17/2025 : In this program, poet and English teacher Tim Staley treats us to some perspectives on poetry, language, images, and how they shape our ideas of reality. The conversation opens with Tim reading Rumi, the Persian Sufi, mystic poet and Muslim scholar. Tim expands into how poetry can bring us into the moment, the very centers of our own lives. He guides us through an exploration of how our minds and emotions are influenced by word choices. Tim shares his thoughts about how AI may come to influence our writing, even of poetry. In addition to Rumi, he reads writings from several poets, including his own and those of Las Cruces, NM resident and internationally recognized poet Joseph Somoza.
Tim Staley, poet 