Poetry

Take a look at three of my syllabic (rhopalic) sestinas published in the Tower Journal, and at “Lying Here,” a cento that appeared in the Found Poetry Review.

“Cynghanedd after Brueghel” was published in the Maine Sunday Telegram, August 6, 2017, in the “Deep Water” series edited by Portland’s Poet Laureate, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc:

My wife Jeri Theriault’s collection of poetry, Radost, my red, was published in July 2016 by Moon Pie Press. It is available at Longfellow Books in Portland’s Monument Square and can also be ordered from Moon Pie or by contacting Jeri directly. The poet Christopher Bursk writes that Radost, my red is “a crafted, compassionate exploration of wishes and hopes, of possibilities, of verbs opening realms, of invitations … This book reminds us of the play of which the mind is capable, of language’s resiliency and its brave joy.” Here’s a sample:

SUNDAY MORNING IN RED SHOES

Bells break into nouns –
birds, shoes
——–and boats –
that use their brightness
well.
——–Finches
tease the air.

My shoes –
these very red shoes –
punctuate
——–the pavement

like roses
and castanets,
——–while blue boats
furrow the river.

No hint
of fading this morning,
——–no finite
redness,
——–no redress.

I undress my heart,
wallow in faith, a fish
in lazy shallows.

Here I play with some notions of “chiming” and rhopalic forms:

SEVEN BAGATELLES

The lecturer hectors
his hearers, whose
blanched, abashed

visages register
exquisite discomfort
at his disquisition.

——–Out on our deck the red Adirondack
——–chairs pursue their prosaic chores.

Too
late to
turn back, to-
night we’re forced to
sleep in Timbuktu.

You
rescue
a cat you
stepped on, the hue
of mud, tail askew,

eyes
the size
of horseflies.
Berber kids eye
us, heads turned sideways.

——–With infinitesimally
——–slow unfastening
——–of flannel, you soften:
——–a deliquescence delirious
——–in its acquiescence.

For-
swear for-
mulas for
happiness, for
the good life, before

some
handsome
but loathsome
guy gives you some-
thing much worse! The sum

of
a love
like that, of
wishful thoughts, of
your sweet dreams? Get ov-

er
it! You’re
enamored
of rowing your
boat without an oar!

——–Unfettered, wind-buffeted,
——–the molded resin lounge chairs
——–lunge at the mildewed railing.

We fix pancakes
while pink clouds scud
across the deepening sky.

Just as we guessed—
the strongest gusts
had passed by dusk.