#ink node

Instead of a street light

angling through your blinds

decorating sleep

I am a pale gleam

on the sheets

my mouth the next verse

we lean into

I want to set you loose

like a wind chime

in a storm

shaking the house

until our teeth crack

I don’t want a taste

I want my body to be

so full of your body

that you wave at yourself

in the mirror

with my hand

The primary reason I started this Tumblr page is to attempt to corral my poems that are published online into a unified space. Mostly I continue to be deliberate about placing work in print journals (such as Forklift, Ohio) and champion the printed page. This catalog is simply a record of what exists in the cloud.

Several poems have been published on Ink Node:

Blind Lemon Something

Painting

Asparagus

The Field

In the Prairie Hiss of Lithe, Bright Grasses

Cheat River

Sinks of Gandy

And there are three poems in Narrative:

Self Portrait with Exile, Bears, and the Original Carter Family

Pruntytown

A Wild Perfection

It’s too cold to smoke outside, but if you come over, I’ll keep my hands to myself, or won’t I. I would like to tell you about the wall eaten up by the climbing plant—it was so beautiful. Various things have been happening to me, all of them sexual. The man on the bus took off his pants so I could see him better. Another man said, “Ignore him darlin’,  just sit on my lap.” But I’m not one of those  who’s hungriest in the morning, unlike the man at the bakery  who eats egg after egg after egg. Listen. Come over: the cold has already eaten the summer. I need another pair of ears:  from the kitchen I can’t tell if I’m hearing wind-chimes or some gray woman with failing arms dropping a pan full of onions and potatoes.                                         This morning I need four hands— two to wash the greens, one to lift a teakettle,  one to pour the milk. This morning, one little mouth  will not do. We could play a game  where we crouch on the tiles, two yellow dogs  drinking coffee from bowls. We could play a game  where we let the breakfast burn. Outside there’s a world where every love-scene  begins with a man in a doorway; he walks over to the woman and says “Open your mouth.”

Dear lost fragment of youthful exuberance, you left your shoes by the river. Dear documentary on clouds assembling, the windows should be moved to account for climate change. There is plenty of everything is a theory I tried to live by once. Dear fortune-teller, dear runner through the park at dusk, dear giraffe girl in the clouds. As theories go it was not very useful. The branches of the trees in winter look like waving fingers, motioning to the power lines get us out of here. I am in the basement with the hedgehog and the hamster wheel. Dear hedgehog, dear repetitive motion, dear rooftops cut off by the window frame. When I think about animals, I envy their bodies. Dear basement, dear setting sun, dear star charts. Dear constellations, I am renaming you.

No one buys poetry.

If you are curious about contemporary poets and small presses, The Lit Pub and HTMLGiant are good places to start looking at reviews of stuff you might not have heard of outside of a poetry class or MFA program. You can also bookmark everyday-genius or let people poems and check in on what they're doing, since there are new poets featured all the time. There are also TONS of online lit journals that offer some great stuff (from the past and currently published) --Ink Node, My Name is Mud, Lamination Colony, Paper Bag, and Noo Journal to name a few. And of course, if you want to take a more traditional route you can always download The Writer's Almanac podcast (or donate. They could use the money, too).