New Mexico Mercury

Weekly Poem: Tonight the Moon is Mexican

and so is the wind
and so are the oleanders
the wind is bothering.
The porch light is no longer

anything but Mexican.
It’s true; tonight
is full of this miracle.
The river

is finally Mexican and...

Weekly Poem: Thanksgiving Day

From the road,
the Brazos Cliffs rise up suddenly from the valley floor,
as the mountain falls away
and leaves brown, gray rock
exposed like broken bones.

I imagine being the first to trundle up the hillside in furs
with food,
and stepping up to the ridge and looking out
and down:
2,000 feet...

Weekly Poem: Dad’s Visit

What did we do
to deserve this beauty -- our blooming cactus flowers, the emerald green shine of our chiles, the boys
and girls the backbones of our families, taking a stab
at adulthood in middle school?  In a city of strong kids, under a sky so wide and this blue,
it’s as though we’re being showered
with praise by a gorgeously generous god...

Weekly Poem: Letters From The Dark

One friend writes from prison,
as helpless as I am
to help him.

Another friend, dead, reveals
himself through words left behind, signs
of him I never noticed
when I thought I knew him...

Weekly Poem: Garden Report

The last of the roses are on the bush,
one red bud caught in the brief dips into cold,
it's final form a tight embrace.
The other opening, opening, insistent and resolute,
bearing the last gleanings of warmer nights...

Weekly Poem: A History of Faith

Man. Woman. Huddled. Crouched in a dark corner.
He hears scuttling roaches. Phantasmagoria. Demons. Pixies.
He hears Stygian depths downward.
“Listen carefully,” she says,
so gently, to calm a child in a schoolhouse of terrors
long before she purportedly stole from the apple tree...

Weekly Poem: At Gathering for Mother Earth | Tewa Women United, written on site

The corn is singing
all colors of corn are singing
and we are listening.

The sun is singing
the sky is blue singing
to all manner of listening.

The listening when
we don’t even know
we are listening...

Weekly Poem: Silence of the Messengers

We hear only hush of wings
these angels who
sweep around us
never a word spoken
never a sword drawn
though their voices be strong, their hearts brave,
knowing we would not remember
if they spoke
would not remember one soft word
nor recall one firey blow...

Weekly Poem: The Spring

Like the way a spring seems
To rise, fresh, out of a silent earth,
So my words, once started,
Find their own way
From my equally silent depths.

I suppose the invisible machinery
Of my subconscious is involved,
But a poem is more than something
Stirred from darkly distorted memories of
My pasts...

Weekly Poem: durable whiteness

still flayed by the swollen pelt racked by pain
durable whiteness
amidst the cracked red sea
a new landscape across my canvas
a new story
you orestes
me hypatia
alack...