Poetry

rinpinnzz wants to know

My Writing

Poetry has been one of the great loves of my life. I read it, write it, revise it, talk about it, teach it, and occasionally recite it to my cat Rufus over morning coffee. He is an attentive listener, though his feedback tends to be somewhat limited.

My poetry moves between unease and humor, tenderness and fracture. I am drawn to emotional undercurrents, intensity, and the strange ways language can hold what is messy, contradictory, and difficult to name. I love poems with urgency and ache, poems that feel a little obsessed, a little haunted. I want to be surprised, broken open, unsettled, or transformed. I love work that lingers long after I've finished reading it. I also love hearing poets read their work aloud. There is something magical about listening to a poem in the poet's own voice and sharing that experience with others.

I am especially passionate about revision. Sometimes I spend hours working on a single word, line, or image, chasing that small shift that suddenly makes a poem come alive. I belong to several private poetry workshops and love discussing craft, reading the work of others, and trying to understand that mysterious spark that allows a poem to stun, surprise, and linger.

The book pictured at the bottom of this page is my debut collection, chicken+lowercase=fleur. It gathers many of the themes that continue to shape my writing: family, memory, illness, body image, grief, humor, and the strange beauty that often exists alongside them.

Selected Publications & Honors

MFA in Creative Writing
BA in Film
Author of chicken+lowercase=fleur (Lily Poetry Review Books)
Nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and Best New Poets
make me unsick was a finalist for the Gambling the Aisle Chapbook Contest and a semifinalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize Annual Chapbook Contest
“not quite 13 ways of thinking about my kidney transplant” received an Honorable Mention in the Gemini Annual Poetry Contest

Selected Journal Publications

Poet Lore
Fourteen Hills
The Tusculum Review
Sugar House Review
Yalobusha Review
Cider Press Review
Permafrost
The Boiler
LEVELER
PMS (Poem Memoir Story)
Fog Machine
Gambling the Aisle
Gemini Magazine
Sleet Magazine
inter/rupture
Thrice Fiction
TNY Press
Folia Literary Journal
The Offbeat
*82 Review
Monkey Bicycle
Dirty Chai
Otis Nebula
Weave
The Offbeat
The Broome Review
Lungfull Magazine
Indefinite Space
Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine
Meat for Tea
great weather for MEDIA
Skidrow Penthouse
The Nervous Breakdown
The Gravity of the Thing
Anti-Heroin Chic
Trampoline
and other fabulous journals

A Poem from the Book

sunflower’s remains

the season of lava and anguish

is gone, and she is nothing

but feathery husk.

l.c. sweeps the porch.

a light spray of frost

crosses rotting boards,

and there she is,

everything on mum’s face

eaten, half-eaten. she has

finally become the uncolor

l.c. desires; if only gray

or soot could fully describe this.

if only l.c. could have been there

as each incisor pierced, sunk,

her fairness giving in, her sepals

bucking, the horror of the clouded light.

l.c. stops sweeping to hold her.

mum’s crisp head warbles

on a tress of shriveled wheat.

l.c.’s fingers whiten, thunder into numb,

and with this raw unfelt

she will edge into every fissure

of autumn until the weeping begins.

Selected Poems

truths and half-truths about sunflowers

one. there are two kinds of sunflowers: the sunflowers you find in books and poems and the sunflowers that chew through phone wire.

two. when a sunflower looks at itself in the mirror, it does not see gold or ochre or tourmaline.

three. most believe that sunflowers move towards the light. lowercase believes that light moves towards the sunflowers.

four. with stems as thick as femurs.

five. the scratching you hear at night is not the cat or wind or the flaccid branches of the silk tree.

six. never leave sunflowers alone with purple love-grass, pink parfait roses, or baby’s-breath.

seven. what is the difference between a slouch and a lurch?

eight. slaked with fuzz and blue-green rot, a sunflower will still have the strength to hobble to the foot of your bed.

nine. on the twenty-seventh day of this insufferable heat lowercase will no longer know where the sunflower ends and everything else begins.

love this pencil,

robert. love the way it glides across the blue lines. love its coral casing & day-glo flowers. love its quickie-click & ceaseless silken lead. what are you thinking about dear robert, rain, heat, sky, what a beautiful day to die. are you dreaming of jesus again, robert. his creamsicle skin & soft fingers. let’s meet in church beneath the green fabric scroll with the glistening ivory doves & beg him to listen. lord, i am not worthy to receive you but only say the word & i shall be healed. & that’s all i really want, robert, to be healed. my dream is your dream. the high ceilings, the velvet pulpit, the blood-soaked crown of thorns. why does living hurt like this, robert, and why can’t we skip the wallowing & praise this pencil instead. don’t you love its holy golden nib, & lasting life. why is this unfixable, robert, & why isn’t this heavenly pencil enough. try writing your name right here, robert. it’s okay if it’s not on the line. carve something divine into the powder-soft flab of my arm. a chalice, a sunflower, a glistening ivory dove. hail to this mechanical pencil, robert. yes, hail to all of these miraculous distractions tethering us to that rumpled thing disguised as hope.

not quite 13 ways of thinking about my kidney transplant

on the bumpy helicopter ride

from colorado to boston

my soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

kept obediently still

as her arteries yattered

they say most soon-to-be-rehomed-kidneys

are carefully removed from their pulpy flesh

beds, and then placed in a cooler brimming with ice

altruistic kidney donor and kidney recipient

are one, even if they never exchange a glance,

share a meal, pose together in a photo proudly

shared on instagram, or compare scars

o mind, o mind, swarming with dread

out with the gabbling demons manned

along the arch of your bedframe,

and in with the hope of pinked and vigorous

kidneys--your darling saviors of despair

when my soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

is finally nestled inside of me

will all of my ancient feelings

of unworthiness disappear

the morning of my kidney transplant

i found myself alone in the dusk plum light

of my kitchen, staring out a scant frosted

window. this silence was new. this silence

was the long-resisted moment of facing

all possibilities

wheeling into the OR,

my drugged brain orbiting,

i imagined my soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

as a gorgeous ruby anemone floating

in a pristine porcelain claw foot bathtub

filled with hand-blown glass bubbles

and swarovski diamonds

known to faint at even the tiniest dribble

of blood, i trained myself to be tough

by poring over photographs of kidneys

and pretending they were buttery croissants

smothered in clotted cream and strawberry jam

i let the image of my shivering

soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

slip from my mind as a wispy

blood-specked tissue settled upon

the toe of the anesthesiologists

magenta clog

10.

i know the thick gunked pelt of both

rational and irrational fear, but i also know

the deep love of one man and yes, and yes,

and yes, and yes, this love will be heaped upon

my pulsing-filtering-soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

11.

every cloud in the sky

whooshed. shreds of winter

unclenched. light blinded. light

thundered. light sizzled.

my soon-to-be-rehomed-kidney

arrived unharmed, and i was finally

ready to be opened

Poetry

My Writing

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Selected Journal Publications