"Jo-Isis" & news

I'm about to take a step back from working on poetry to edit my short story collection & novella, but within the next month or so "Inanna" should be available, once I've finished formatting and getting the cover I have in mind in order. But in preparation for the ascetic lifestyle that comes with editing longer works (i.e. locking one's self away in the tower, fasting on avacados and water for the whole day while you try to get this damn story in order, because who has time to cook, am I right?), I wanted to get all of the poems sitting in my notebook in order and realized that I had not only "Inanna" coming out of that morass of text, but also another chapbook tentatively titled "Trifecta: Maiden, Mother, Crone; Girl, Monster, Toy"














So far, the running thread of these seems to be targeting the problematic notion of feminine divinity in neo-paganism, which is the reoccurring motif of women dissected into three neat little categories of "maiden-mother-crone." If I am recalling correctly, it's largely a notion that has come out of Wicca and has influenced goddess centric spirituality.  Now I myself definitely would say that I fall under the "neo-pagan" category as I simply have a hard time adhering strictly to re-constructionist beliefs, but I definitely am not Wiccan, as it's really too dualistic and simplistic for me. For our purposes here, I will just say that I am a pantheist - which is the belief that the universe itself is divine.  But I do firmly recognize that human notions of the divine often reflect what we believe to be true about ourselves and our values. The "trifecta" of maiden-mother-crone has a tendency to put women into little boxes and I feel this fails to recognize the inherent plurality of identity. It misses how our lives are essentially gradients, for lack of a better word, in which the self is at any one time many layers of inter-sectional states. And if we view the divine in such a fashion, are we not underestimating the beauty and chaos of the universe itself? But I don't intend this work to be wholly religious in nature. So far it is definitely more of a sort of path finding for identity while navigating the spiritual road posts culture has laid out in front of you.  I really look forward to sharing it with you once it is all in order.

Since it is Mother's Day tomorrow, I figure it would be fitting to share a poem from this collection which feels ready to be shared and is about the matriarch who kept my father's side of the family together for decades.
***

girl into maiden into mother into

every death

are these the tests of my faith?

didn't get the memo

that goddess equals  the many color

gradient

fire is not contained in urban decay

summer pallets

you can pop out Robert Graves all you like

but I met my grandmother once,

and in her eyes, I saw her running

the length of the earth, wild, jubilant,

crushing whole cities with leaps

and bounds, all the while to come home

just a little tired, collapsing in the

depression era dining set where she smoked,

and dreamed about flowers

that really grow

in beds she spent her whole life

collecting the egg shells of yesterday

laying down her own body as glorious

americana compost

Sea Shattered

So here it is, another poetry chapbook I finally edited and compiled that's been sitting on my back burner for six months. I've spent the past week working on the edits for "Inanna" but that cover will have to wait awhile until I can get a hold of the resources to make the cover I have in mind, so in the meanwhile I used all of yesterday to finish the touches on this little menagerie of words inspired from my trip to the Gulf last October.

I am pretty worn out from all that screen staring I did yesterday, so here is the link to the Smashwords page where you can find it. You can have it for free or, if for some reason you think this pile of poems I conjured up while sitting on stormy shores for a week is worth a coin or two, you can pay me what you want. Regardless, I hope you enjoy it, and I am grateful for the time you take in reading it (insert heartful emojis here)

When I visited the Gulf for the first time in twelve years, I was sensually overwhelmed by the power of our Ocean Mother. She's out in the waves, and ever true to her siren self, she's looking for a meal to shatter, for a wayward human to wander too close to her rip tide. Like the seagull bashing shells against rocks, the sea has a way of fragmenting you as you stand face to face with her alone on the shore, the edges of yourself fading into the misty morning light. These poems are from that experience of confronting Ocean Mother for the first time in what seemed an age, and I'm still trying to discover if I myself shattered on those shores, or if I ended up taking other pieces home with me

click here to go to Sea Shattered @ Smashwords