A NEW POEM ABOUT A FERN

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My fern poem is here.

Eric Magrane, a poet/geographer from NMSU, put together a killer project in the form of Spiral Orb 15.  I encourage you to check out how he designed the online experience of the journal (it doesn’t rely on graphics and yet it holds me). For Spiral Orb, each writer was assigned a species found in the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in Southern New Mexico.

I wrote a poem to my favorite fern. When I found out my fern was called the Fairy Sword Fern, I thought I was getting lucky.  The speaker in the poem struggles with aging and marriage, and when he looks to the fern he is envious and this leads to anger.

Magrane put together a spirited reading where I got to perform my fern poem and hear top-notch poems about some of my favorite species like the ocotillo and the phainopepla. Here is the flyer for the reading that already happened, you know, for your records:

 

NIXES MATE REVIEW — NEW POEM UP

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I’d like to thank Boston’s NIXES MATE REVIEW for publishing one of my new poems. See the original post here. 

We Don’t Look at Each Other

 

We came to the edge of the forest

to practice the raising of our spirits.

We drove here in reliable vehicles.

We lined them up behind us.

 

A stealth bomber slides

across the sky. I imagine

how thermals feel up

its matte black wings.

I don’t tell the others.

 

One lady raises her open hands

to the damp particles

pumping towards us

from the forest.

She feels the spirit. It’s easy to see.

She jams her hands

back in her pockets

like the rest of us.

 

We’re strangers unkennelled

by irritable attention spans,

dehydrated generosities

and a swirling boredom

with the modern world.

 

Soon we’ll be splashing

gas on the skirt

of this great forest.

Each person will pour

all they’ve got.

 

There’s no sense hurrying

hydrocarbons.

The timer’s set.

 

The headlights at our backs

make it look

like a movie.

Our silhouettes

twitch on the silver

screen of the forest.

 

It’s this last bit of waiting

that burnishes our fear.

PROJECT AGENT ORANGE-NEW POEM UP

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I’m pleased to have a poem posted on PROJECT AGENT ORANGE: See the original post.

Arms Dislocated

A Poem by Tim Staley

I’ve read enough women poets to know
they bleed for life
and men bleed against it.
I buried the soldier in me
like a placenta that still
pulses underground.
Lynn Strongin says,
tough-minded poetry
will necessarily
be the most triumphant
in the end.

A mind isn’t tough at all,
it’s blown to shreds in a second.

HAPPY HOLLANDAISE SAUCE from Poet Staley

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ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

 

All I want for Christmas is a french kiss that lasts the rest of my life

 

All I want for Christmas is really a french kiss that lasts the rest of my life even when i’m sleeping, or grieving, or engaged in figuring out my taxes, or at the grocery store choosing avocados, pushing into them with my thumb, picking off the plug to see if they’re green inside

 

All I want for Christmas is my baby teeth in the place of my adult teeth because small, petite things are sexy

 

All I want for Christmas is to drop a hip hop album so gangsta they scrub all my cusses out

 

All I want for Christmas is to trade this guilty feeling of chicken bones poking through my intestines for anything else

 

All I want for Christmas is the Bible boiled down to a single SLAM poem, 3 minutes, no exceptions, no props, look me in the eye

 

All I want for Christmas is for love to feel the way it used to

 

All I want for Christmas is for sex to creep from the gutter like 3 tired, old raccoons

 

All I want for Christmas is for Martin Luther King to be celebrated

 

All I want for Christmas is the same Santa

 

All I want for Christmas are the lies to be true but never vice versa

 

All I want for Christmas is canned cranberry to be better than homemade

 

All I want for Christmas is this poem to reflect me and how I’m feeling, like really feeling, even though all I do is choose and follow the best I can

 

All I want for Christmas is to be smart, witty, acerbic, and adorable all in the first take like Lil Wayne in 10th grade

 

All I want for Christmas is my own prescription to anxiety pills so I can stop stealing my dog’s

 

All I want for Christmas is the ability to digest bad news and good news like a dog eats dog food

 

All I want for Christmas is Richard Branson to hug Southern New Mexico and not let go first

 

All I want for Christmas in terms of white dudes is Rip van Winkle and Mr. Clean

 

All I want for Christmas is for my internet to go down forever

 

All I want for Christmas is to be ok with it

 

All I want for Christmas won’t sit still

 

All I want for Christmas won’t come from the things adults do on film when they’re filming adult films

 

All I want for Christmas is to be there first like the hands of a clock

 

All I want for Christmas is dopamine, endorphin, serotonin, oxytocin, a shit-ton of it

 

All I want for Christmas—please, just one taste