Tag: modern American poetry
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Appalachian Funeral
I wrote Appalachian Funeral after driving past an abandoned church near the highway outside Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, where the wind carried dust from passing semis into the open doorway. The poem’s theme is the residue of faith and labor — how objects, not memory, hold the pressure of what’s gone.
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Large Language Questions
I wrote Large Language Questions while testing how grammar itself can fracture under pressure. Each question turns syntax into a physical object—hinge, blade, lock—so that language becomes a machine grinding against desire.
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Buying Sumo Oranges at Pike Place Market, Seattle
I wrote Buying Sumo Oranges at Pike Place Market, Seattle after watching the market’s light flatten fruit into objects of weight and memory. The poem examines how consumption and absence coexist—how touch and taste replace speech when grief becomes physical.
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Making Lemonade Street
I wrote “Making Lemonade Street” after watching a forest near my neighborhood being cleared for new housing. The poem began as a note on the phrase “the forest in front of the forest”—a doubling that felt like both description and elegy. I wanted to record the moment when the natural and the artificial overlap, when…