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I won an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and the Stella Earhart Memorial Award from the University of Houston where I earned the Ph.D. Previously, I had earned an MA in Contemporary British Literature from Columbia University’s Graduate Faculties. Presa Press published two poetry chapbooks, The Blue Road and Burden Sparked with Eternity, in 2018 and 2019. I have taught lower division college students, nursery school, K-12 students, their teachers, in a nursing home and the San Antonio jail using my methods to enable writing pleasure.
The Blue Road
Light glows above the grass, soundless as golden snow.
In shadows I can wade up to my thighs in blue.
The greatest hope is not that things will get better
but that they will not get any worse. Milocz says
an ordinary day is a great miracle:
the day one resists entering with its odor
of drudgery, orderliness, small monuments
of care, Mother's white and gold plates, Grandmother's pots,
doing laundry, signing off on death forms.
What some want is the blue road on fire ahead
or a fish-headed mermaid with womanly feet.
Truer than dreams, the world offers only itself.
The Blue Road
The chapbook was published by Presa Press in 2018. All the poems had been previously published in: "Atlanta Review," "Bitterroot,""Blue Unicorn," "California Quarterly," "Calyx," "Oklahoma Review," "Plainsongs," "Poetry," "Poetry Motel," Presa," "Rattle," "Straylight," "The Paris Review," and "The Same."
Burden Sparked with Eternity
MAGIC ON NEW YEAR'S NIGHT
While Lilly sloshed and laughed
in the bathtub, speaking the parts
of Cinderella's evil step-sisters
with two Polly dolls, she told me
I was Cinderella at work.
That felt about right
as I slumped on the toilet lid
wasted from celebrating
with too much firewater
on the night before.
I watched her shining wet, body
shift back and forth in the tub
talking to me, to her dolls,
dolls talking to each other
as I fell into the spell she cast.
Like a fairy tale heroine on a hillside
breathing earth's opening blossoms
she banished me to happiness.
Burden Sparked with Eternity
The poems explore the delight and many adventures that a new grandmother has with her courageous and well-beloved only grandchild. The chapbook was publsihed by Presa Press in 2019.