when I live among old trees hung with deadwood, windstorms growing stronger each season, did I not expect a branch to sail like a javelin through roof and ceiling? Why wasn’t I prepared, construction hat and flashlight, for the surprise of tree in living room, power already lost, rain pounding the neighborhood? When disease, injury, fire and loss batter those around me, when I have been so long lucky that my number must soon come up, and I’ve entered the decades of loss. Funny, to feel grateful: that that’s all it is, happy to be standing. At nine I watched wind topple an old elm tree in our recess-crowded playground, an eighth-grade girl pinned on her knees underneath, volleyball still in her hand.
is the author of three poetry collections: tesla’s daughter
(March St. Press), Walking Back the Cat (Bright Hill Press), and
Light That Sounds Like Breaking (Mayapple Press). Her chapbook,
Matryoshka Houses debuted in June 2020 (Kelsay Press).
Her work has appeared in Bear River Review, Brilliant Corners, Harpur Palate,
KYSO Flash, Moon City Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pinyon Press, Rattle, Rhino,
Slipstream, Smartish Pace, The Atlanta Review, The MacGuffin, Tinderbox, and
The Notre Dame Review, among others.
Her writing has also been nominated for Pushcart recognition and inclusion in
The Best Small Fictions, and has been anthologized in several venues,
including Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse
(Lost Horse Press, 2017), in plein air: poems and drawings of the natural
world (Poetic Licence Press), The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems
(Red Hen Press, 2011), and The Dire Elegies: 59 Poets on Endangered Species
(Foothills Publishing, 2006).
