Here, you’ll find some of my personal favorites. For more of my poetry, you might like to check out the Ensembles page.
Reverse Muscial Chairs
Reverse Musical Chairs, first published by Stoneboat Literary Journal (March 2019), read by Billy Collins on The Poetry Broadcast (9 September 2021).
Sundays at noon
for years
at my mother’s table with eight chairs
the seven of us sat.
We’d take our usual seats
and there was always room
for another.
That winter
the six of us struggled
to find our spots at the same table
among the eight original chairs
despite my father’s permanent absence
leaving room for two.
This afternoon
the eight chairs remain
waiting round the same table.
There are only five of us left.
My mother took the music with her;
no one can find a seat.
When the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon
When the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon was read by Scott “Renzo” Renzoni on The Lenox Bookstore’s broadcast in May 2023 and long-listed by Billy Collins for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2022. It appears in both of my poetry collections, GALOSHES (2020) and POLLYWOGS (2025). (The correct format in couplets might not appear on a phone…)
It’s one thing to be asked to picture a cat with a fiddle,
or a cow jumping over the moon, but when I get to the part
about the dish running away with the spoon, I get stuck.
Everyone knows that spoons dig bowls, not dishes,
and that dishes are best forked, not spooned.
I imagine two doomed misfits stopping mid-flight
for a brief break in the moonlight. When Spoon turns to Dish
for a furtive kiss, the jumping cow’s shadow descends
upon them as the cat plays Prelude to a Kiss on his fiddle
until the little dog giggles into a fit of laughter at the aftermath.
My Math
My Math was a finalist in the Voice of Peace: International Poetry and Short Story Anthology Competition 2021.
In my math, division wouldn’t exist
since we’ve had enough of that already.
Same goes for multiplication,
since things can get out of hand quickly.
Subtraction’s little losses of keys and socks
and its unacceptable taking away of
species, cultures, and loved ones, would stop.
In my math, we’d stick to addition,
take into account everyone and everything
and there’d always be room for more.
The Clean Plate
The Clean Plate, first published by Crab Orchard Review (Dec. 2019), read by Billy Collins on The Poetry Broadcast (23 Nov. 2021).
You just grew up.
Just like that.
Just now, sitting at the table
while I had my back turned
to stir the stew.
Just gobbled down all your crusts
as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I cannot believe
you ate all the crusts, already.
If I’d seen this moment coming
yesterday, at breakfast, when
they were still inedible and evil,
I’d have saved those last crusts
with your little teeth marks, shellacked them
and glued a picture of you,
right then, in the middle.
When to Flip the Pancakes
When to Flip the Pancakes, shortlisted by Billy Collins for the Fish Publishing Prize (2021), published in Stoneboat Literary Journal 12.1 (May 2022) For my son, Alex.
While I make a fat stack of pancakes, my son
throws his little arms around my thighs and asks,“Where did Mittens go when she died?”
I lift him to my left hip. We hold each other close
as I ladle more batter onto the buttered pan.
We watch and wait in silence, missing the cat,
until backward bubbles pock across the tops,
tiny signs signalling the time has come
to flip the pancakes. I hand him the spatula
and nod. He has to twist his whole arm but
accomplishes it first flip and whispers,
“Good thing the other side is golden,”
and I hope he’s right.
How to Choose Haiku
“How to Choose Haiku” was featured by National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo).
“Are you a goddess?”
bee asks cherry tree—and she
bursts into blossom.
“So, Mom.
What do you think
of my haiku?”
I ask into the air.
A bee answers,
by biting
the back my knee,
like that time,
under the cherry tree,
when she taught me
to write haiku
by choosing to love
every single thing—
even the sting.
NaPoWriMo Day 22: "...write a poem about something you’ve done – whether it’s music lessons, or playing soccer, crocheting, or fishing, or learning how to change a tire – that gave you a similar kind of satisfaction, and perhaps still does."
My mother and I used to “play poetry” together, and after I moved away at age 16, we would sometimes write to each other in verse. She enjoyed experimenting with different poetic forms, and I would try to respond in whatever form she used. We never submitted our poems anywhere. As it turned out, the first poem I ever had published was a tanka written in response to one of hers after her death. You can find it beautifully set below by Sue Niewiarowski—my partner in rhyme. (For more of my poems set by Sue click here.