The poems in Naming the Rose draw from vulnerable, autobiographical elements mixed with the obliviousness of those around the speaker. The two-sectioned poem “The Light of Day” contrasts loving memories of pumpkin carving by the speaker’s daughter with the fear of the speaker-mother as her partner and the father of her daughter, “drunk,” “too drunk,” “rid[es] down the highway at 90 miles an hour” with “a huge stolen pumpkin on [her] lap.”
(reviews)
This collection of poems explores the fracture of a marriage after a secret is revealed—a husband’s closeted homosexuality, at odds with his religious upbringing and the life he has built. Set against the pastoral backdrop of stables and gardens, canning jars and roving horses, tether & lung traverses the landscape of loss and longing with striking vulnerability.
(reviews)
If God appears on these pages, it is in the sacred clarity of the concrete detail. The speaker as a young girl, drawing ankhs and peace signs in the back of her bible, listening to a hymn as it slides beneath the pews.
(reviews)
You hang out on top of the three ancient towels you’ve layered on your couch and know you’ve done the automated surveys, and they improve nothing. You and your doctor have pushed pre-authorization – nothing. You’ve talked to your HR managers and you’ve written to the state’s insurance commissioner, and this has done nothing.
(nonfiction)
Everything / about bleeding and nothing about how to get this stain out.
(poetry)
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