How to make a vortex

Place a clock on a shelf for a least two weeks

Look at the clock and trust that it knows time

Allow life to continue, forget about the clock but continue to glance its way: make sandwiches, fill glasses with water, scatter and gather toys

One night, remove the clock

You will find yourself turning your head and searching for the time
The clock wants to get back up on the shelf but is locked in the closet
Now the missing clock wants your gaze

Maybe the poem can be

the prints skittering across the snow-skinned yard

and the wondering about the small body who produced them

The melting artifact with the teeming forest breathing in its ear

Interview at Word Carver

Hello, friends. How are you? It's fall, and I'm ready. As many of you know, one of my favorite projects is Paging Columbus, the reading series I run. Amy Dalrymple and Cynthia Rosi of the Word Carver podcast were kind enough to post this recent interview with me about Paging Columbus and poetry.

Hope you'll take a listen and enjoy here. You can also hear the enormously-talented Barbara Fant read at our last Paging Columbus event.

Paradise

This was one of my all-time favorite videos as a child...we constantly borrowed it from the library, and I watched it so many times I think we wore the tape out. My dad recently sent me the link to it, and I laughed when I heard this song, which features prominently in Kill Bill (also one of my favorite movies). Fascinating how aesthetic and sound embed themselves in us...

Three New Poems at Gold Wake Live

I have three new poems up at the beautiful Gold Wake Live (a brand new online publication from Gold Wake Press!). Here's one of them. Hope you enjoy the poems--the whole issue is great. The design is lovely. Also, writer pals--they are open to submissions! Send them some beauty.