I have written poetry and short fiction all my life and published a lot of it. My day job is editor of a trade publication Illinois Racing News. I live on a small horse farm in northern Illinois with my husband and various animals. My latest book, "Ribcage," (from Glass Lyre Press) recently won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. I also am an associate editor of FutureCycle Press and Kentucky Review.

Retire
Retire to a village with bluebirds, hollyhocks and people of all ages. (ad in The New Yorker)

Bluebirds, hollyhocks, people of all ages.
Golden years of slick brochures.
Grey frosted models decorate pages
Swinging golf clubs, self assured
And comely strolling hand in hand,
Testaments to Viagra, the good life,
Promissory notes of sun and sand.
The realized dream of man and wife.
No wheelchairs, dementia, amputations,
Cancer, kidney failure, heart attacks,
Trips to the ER, chemo stations,
Elastic stockings, colostomy sacks.
No vacant stares of senility’s last stages
At bluebirds, hollyhocks, people of all ages.

-first published in Boston Literary Magazine



Editor's Note: In an email to me about the following poem, Joan wrote: [Here's] a Veteran's Day poem that appeared in Cider Press Review last year. The subject of the poem is my cousin who was killed by a kamikaze plane at Okinawa. I was just a small child at the time.

The Japanese Culture of Suicide

​
If you fling yourself from a high-rise,
Attempt to avoid falling on passers-by.
If your fraudulent or criminal pursuits come to light
It is only right to disembowel yourself— 
A feat with its own aesthetic. Mishima said
Seppuku saves one from being ridiculous.

At Okinawa, on the ship The Franklin, a 19-year-old
Irish boy from South Chicago
Was assigned a role in a ritual sacrifice.
A Kamikaze pilot demonstrated
Moral integrity. Hot flash of patriotic fervor.

Caught in an alien tradition
That boy standing in the ship’s kitchen
Simply died.