I don't mean to brag but when I told my dog I was in @here_poetry_journal he was like, super duper impressed
Thank you so much to @jaylabbe for including me. This poem represents a small breakthrough, a new vein I started mining within myself, an exploration of psyche and imagination. I would not have written it without the input and friendship of @rmhaines.etc . I'm feeling very lucky today and every day
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Watson is 14 today! He's the best thing that ever happened to me. He's been throwing attitude since the first day I met him, and I wouldn't have it any other way. He's laying next to me, snoring like a lawnmower on gravel. Every day with him is a gift. 👑
Again a little late (I'm late to everything this year), I'm honored that two of my poems, "Phytoremediation at Chernobyl" and "Chiron" found a home in the winter issue of @skyislandjournal - I love this journal for the way they foster and celebrate community. And as a treat I got to share the issue with @she_arranges_words ! How cool is it to be a poet. Pretty freaking cool, I think. The whole issue is gorgeous.
It's been a minute since I posted about what I've been reading and contemplating, so I wanted to talk about Alex Tretbar's two chapbooks released this last fall: Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep Books) and According to the Plat Thereof (ethel). I read them together, and took them with me on my trek across the country back home to Reno. On my drive, especially driving across Kansas (where Watson and I got to meet Alex!), I spent time thinking about the way he writes about the Midwest, about the carceral experience, the unhoused population. Here are poems that hold within them direct experience and empathy for invisible populations. Here are poems that come from an astonishing imagination, grounded in critique of the carceral system, of capitalism, of any system that marginalizes humans, eats them and spits them out as waste. Tretbar lays bare the obvious hypocrisy of a system that claims to rehabilitate, but instead pushes humans through a meat grinder–
"The Miranda warning is music, anaphoric. It's not much further. The founding fathers founded me. They moved mountains. Hollywood lied when it said you only get one phone call. You get as many as you can afford."
I'm grateful for the generosity of these poems and the opportunity to read them together, the ethos of this poet, and the craft I so admire. What a gift to read them. Lately I've been dedicated to reading and researching witness poetry, and these poems live in my head as I consider and write about works of witness, about the importance of documenting injustice, of recognizing ALL people, not just those in front of me. Incarcerated and unhoused populations are always in the margins, receiving our sympathy (when we remember it), but never the attention, care, real understanding and action required to correct what is a massive injustice right in front of us, not half a world away. Abolition starts with recognition. These are both such accomplished works and I encourage you to pick them up.
"Coda" poems from Kansas City Gothic. The rest from According to the Plat Thereof.
@alex_tretbar@the_ethelzine@brokensleepbooks
