I had two poems accepted for publication in the next edition of the Bear River Review. I will post them here once the legal stuff is clear. It’s sort of a closed market in that, as far as I can tell, they only invite submissions from people who attended the previous year’s Bear River Writer’ Conference. Anyway, very honored to have “Little Sister” and “The Universe Before the Breakup” accepted.
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Publishing tips from Kevin Larimer
I posted on the CUPoetry blog. You can watch Kevin Larimer’s video and read it here.
Filed under Publishing
Flying Over – published by Pegasus, Spring 2013 issue
This poem was published in the Winter/Spring 2013 issue of Pegasus, the poetry journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society
Flying Over
The squirrels had a nest up in the big maple
in his neighbor’s back yard.
Since he was retired now,
he had plenty of time to watch them.
Climbing down the trunk,
defying gravity with their claws firmly
planted in the bark, tails twitching,
they danced along the power line.
His neighbor’s wife would leave peanuts on the deck,
the shells of which would inevitably be found
on his side of the fence.
Nothing but bushy-tailed rodents,
he complained to his daughter when
she stopped by one Sunday for coffee.
Oh, Dad, she said, but they are so cute.
So he kept to himself the rush of joy
he had felt the day before
when a red-tailed hawk,
desperate after another fruitless flight over
fields still full of corn and soybeans,
swept in and picked the fattest squirrel
right off the porch.
A muted squeal, then silence,
broken only by the sound
of the dropped nut bouncing off the deck.
Filed under Poems
The Year of Firsts
This poem was published in an anthology titled On Our Own, Widowhood for Smarties from Silver Boomer Books in 2012.
The Year of Firsts
Shirley endured her year of firsts without him.
First Thanksgiving, first Christmas,
first New Year’s (his favorite
with cabbage for luck and all that).
First Valentine’s was sad; he was such
a romantic. And just when she thought
she’d given up on happiness, the first spring came
with first robins, then first summer
followed. Wasn’t that a hummingbird?
First grandbaby is due in December.
And tonight, her first date, well, just dinner really
but she’s as nervous as she was for her first prom.
Filed under Poems
poet james escher 