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.

Reflections After Midnight


Full moon and one bat diving for insects.
You sit in the tree of wonder
Drinking scotch and remembering
How the red eye of a cigarette
Could stab the darkness,
The languor after sex,
Smoke ascending in perfect zeros.
 
Somewhere a dog is barking
The  monotony of boredom.
An owl’s hoodoo phrase,
Coyotes on the hunt,
Their ragged xylophones
Along the creekbed.
 
This tree leaning awkwardly as a crutch
Must come down. Your mind’s a chainsaw,
Your thoughts troubling
As nightjars. How in childhood,
The mother is memory, the father
Resolution. And you—fount of confusion
Watching the sky stitched with the spangled
Myths of your forefathers.
 
Ice melts in your glass, weary and loveless.
The house is dark, its windows closed.
A long walk from here to there
With only the moon’s frail reflection.




 
​Kick
 
 
Kicks as she fires
Forcing her hand sideways,
Involuntary squeeze of the trigger,
Look of surprise as he falls.
The actual target unblemished.
What’s a nine-year-old girl
Doing here anyway? The mantra
Of how we must conceal
Pistols in purses or
Sagging pants pockets. Or simply
Holster the wild west
Tradition and stalk the streets
At high noon looking for action.
Smirking men at gun shows
Tattooed with knives or AK-47’s,
Chinese symbols that don’t mean
What they think. The Beretta
In our closet  It has a kick
To break a wrist. I’d still be
Trying to cock it as the assassin
Tightens the garrotte.
 
 
  


Making the Most
 
 
We waste gas to make the most
Of the last days of color. A saturation
Of the possible—scarlet and gold as a crown
Passed from generation to generation.
This year’s cold
Summer generated such an explosion
Of beauty, it’s difficult to comprehend
There’ll come a time when we won’t
See it. Never again. Words we don’t
Believe in our claret hearts.
Even our silver maples have grown
Golden instead of simply shedding their dull leaves.
Like shy girls who discover orgasm,
They rouse themselves in the late sunlight
To spread their weak limbs.
It’s the final week of October.
Green machines are swallowing
The corn. Canada geese harvest
What’s left where the gilded beans
Have vanished. Everywhere the trees
Are a celebration
Of brilliance. An industry of loss
Showing us how it can be borne.



 
  
November 22
 
 
One of those days that inspired the question--
What were you doing when…
I was shoveling rice cereal into the mouth
Of an infant while a toddler tugged at my sweater.
The radio was on.
 
Yesterday, there was no mention
In the papers or on TV. An old
Familiar story: tragedy. It was still
Nov. 22 last night at 10:30
When Amber’s son heard a crackle
Of the barn igniting and thirty four
Horses died screaming.
Maybe the hay or mice at the wires.
Nobody knows for sure and maybe
Never will.
 
Those good-luck days
Amber’s eleven year old daughter
And her show pony. The rare white
Thoroughbreds. How Amber figured
The genetics. Sold one to Hollywood.
So much for lucky.
 
So much for all the bystanders waving
As he passed in the open car
Which allowed him to wave back
And the one man in a window.
 



  
Mexico
 
 
Cloaked in Monarchs, you glow
Orange and black as a tigress
In the El Rosario preserve.
His family looks at you askance, gringa.
The cold tiles, his brothers, the ranchero
Where the agave fails. The madre who dotes
On her youngest. The language
You refuse to understand. So you pose
Dressed in butterflies. His horses,
His fighting cocks. He mourns when you
Miscarry his son.  It’s a man’s affair,
The money. The photo on his phone.
A big house, cream-colored stucco
With a carven door elaborate as a cathedral.
Who lives here, you wonder. He says
There’s something we must discuss.
So that is that. He’s cleaned out
The bank accounts, your name was never
On anything. He won’t be back.
Blindsided, the bitter tasting Monarchs
Stick in your throat
Sucking the milkweed sap
Of eighteen years..