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Coyote Mercury Posts

What Stranger Miracles

November 14, 2023 • • 1 Comment

My chapbook What Stranger Miracles is now available in print.

First published as a free digital chapbook by White Knuckle Press in 2016, it’s a collection of 10 prose poems of 100 words or less (per White Knuckle Press’s guidelines).

I’m grateful to editors Dale Wisely and Howie Good who gave this book its first readers and designed such a nice online home for it. It also earned a nomination for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2017 Elgin Award.

Marketing copy:

What Stranger Miracles is a chapbook collection of ten short prose poems first published online by White Knuckle Press in 2016.

From the haunting imagery of plastic relics washed ashore to the enigmatic surveyors who silently observe the world’s secrets, each poem within What Stranger Miracles encapsulates a unique universe, blending the mundane with the mysterious and exploring themes of environmentalism, extinction, love, loss, and the enduring connection between humanity and the sea. 

It was a Science Fiction Poetry Association 2017 Elgin Award Nominee.

from What Stranger Miracles:

THROWN TO SEA (I)

The ocean spits out plastic: faded, thin, but whole. The great-grandchildren of those who threw it in retrieve the relics, invent stories and religions for their ancestors, singing their praises only to go home and complain bitterly that they didn’t leave behind something more useful than just the cast off detritus of their lives. Not even a boat to get off this rock. They are prisoners. The sea is the law.

—

You can order What Stranger Miracles on Amazon.

Stockholm Syndrome for the Early Pandemic

April 9, 2021 • • Leave a comment

the silver bass guitar hangs on the wall 
a life preserver on a transport ship

I remember notes so low unplugged
the mic on Zoom & Google Classroom 

couldn’t pick up La Grange, Ceremony,
endless runs through scales & permutations 

our cats crossed keyboards and kids
passed waving through backgrounds

but when we show only heads & shoulders
we could be rock stars, could’ve been

dying, afloat and silent behind our screens
clutching life preservers just off camera

I strum grateful fingers over thick strings
a warm and friendly rumble fading as I leave

to go back to work, begin the long uncertain
swim back to newly strange familiar shores

Oceans

April 6, 2021 • • 2 Comments

my head is full of oceans
full of plastic

sea foam memories
pass for wisdom

sea green trees
whisper like grey waves

come home come home

trickle down through chest
and lungs and drown and drown
where plastic bits break down

where seabirds soar
and drift beneath the sea-
glass shards of stars

If I only had a brain (Thanks, Carolee!)

Return to Sender

April 5, 2021 • • Leave a comment

over there’s a rusted pipe
a candy cane in an open field

is it a searching periscope eye
or gaping mouth accusing?

barn swallows weave the sky
questions unfolding

you say stay still
we don’t need to answer

I wish I was the static
invisible between your stations

This is the end of this series that I started posting in 2019. The series originated in 2018 as sample poems I wrote with my students at school. I didn’t like any of them so in early 2019, I cut them up by line, by stanza, by phrase and collaged them back together into 10 poems most of which have titles related in some way or other to the history of the US Postal service.

Of course, I stopped writing for almost 2 years when I hit a snag on “Facer Canceller.” Couldn’t figure it out and couldn’t get on with much else writing-wise. Suddenly it was 2 years later. I finished the poem and picked up where I left off.

I’m still not quite sure how it happened. How it went so fast and took so long.

P.S.

March 19, 2021 • • 1 Comment

everyone hoped
we would recover

but we got worse
& stronger

when the daylight wanes
& the moon grins

we are this and that—
blue with time
& forgery

we are trees tangling
between the shadow
& the sky