Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Coincidences
So when evening came I thought that finally
the end was here, I mean to say that since so many
things occurred inside me, I didn’t need to choose
until the hallway was filled with undefined misery
and only the old servant woman passed mistrustfully
like the blind who collect all the sounds or like
the importance the sick child suddenly gives to dusk
so that since that moment he won’t ever forget; then
the harmonica stopped playing on the above floor
mother got too old
poor kneeling people found the door to another life
but they remained outside like simple talk that has
no wings to break our hearts or if they didn’t notice
the blood as I was playing with my hat; it was only
a simple coincidence like music in the beyond
that seeks what poetry silences on earth.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4051627

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

ÜBERMENSCH’S HOPE
With gifts from Mars, the Übermensch’s hope
lights fires in our hearts
till longing becomes flesh
and the oak bends down before the mushroom
and you, symbol of bravery, unerring
shield of freedom, are degraded
by the weak and crafty merchants
like the worms that eat the fallen lion’s carcass.
Gone is the beast with its proud talons
that frightened earth and sky, gone are
the walls painted by gunpowder and blood,
but if these verses could survive
and live as you have lived, they’d sing
for you and shatter those who ravaged you.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562959

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763513

excerpt

On Saturday morning he talked to the pair about a trinket he’d
admired. Would they pick it up while he wrote some postcards?
Johnny retrieving the car, Ace stuffed the last of his money into the
girl’s hand. It totalled a few thousand U.S. dollars.
– Buy yourself something nice, girl.
Midnight lifted her dress and inserted the roll into a place it was
unlikely to be discovered.
– I get you a special present, she said. Something to remember me.
But Ace would never receive the gift — or so he believed as he
stood on the balcony and watched the rental speed away. He hurriedly
filled a suitcase and flagged the airport shuttle.
The following year was a prosperous one for Courier North. Commodity
prices had spiked and the mines were reopening. Neal broke
his vow and married a Filipina half his age. He’d met Conchita at
Sally’s and decided to keep her.
Ace began feeling poorly just before freeze-up. Tests confirmed
the doctor’s suspicions.
Neal bought him out and hired a young pilot to handle the longer
flights. Ace retired to his cabin on the banks of the river, passing the
time feeding the deer and listening to the wolves howl. Sometimes
his old friend would fly low, skimming the treetops, an aerial
how-do.
Nights he couldn’t sleep, Ace would sometimes upend the box of
photos and spread them out on the table. It was while rummaging
through his memories that Midnight’s last words came back to him:
I get you a present to remember me.
What could it have been? he wondered. But then the light began
to fade, and it didn’t matter anymore.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

II
With a virgin crystal vision and a
dream underarm lighting his thoughts
nascent creativity of the poet
throws his diaphanous sight
to the four edges of the cosmos
identifying his future in the brightest
petals of the rose, and in the sweetest
whisper of the trickling rivulet,
the young poet observing a future.
He stands eloquently unfettered
by the banality of modern stupidity
he stands and records the unspent
grace and its splendid view
being incarcerated by bigots.
Events of the ancient night
parade in front of his retina and
are repeated with new intensity as
the Gates of Heaven still divide
troglodytes in clans and classes in
powerful wealth and
pious benevolence: concepts
embedded deep in souls
and in the stanzas of this hymn.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186583