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The Evolution of the Alphabet

I’m 72 poems into my next collection. As usual, only about 50 will make the cut, which means I want to write 90 or so, to create a good variety to cull from. I’ve moved through a quiet period in my writing this winter—I stopped going to my weekly writing group on Sundays, just took notes as ideas and thoughts surfaced, and wrote down dreams, like these— I wear shoes that cause hurricanes … I can change the colors of walls by singing … I am talking in sign language and it turns into hula … I am creating huge, human-sized, stained glass insect wings for a gallery show … I…

When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as…

If you love Le Guin, you’ll love this article, these memories. Her Left Hand, The Darkness

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. – Edna St. Vincent Millay Friend, songwriter, singer, beautiful human

“Congratulations Adrienne, You have been selected to be in the Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018 by the Black Mountain Press and The Halcyone Magazine editorial staff!” I’m so happy about this. Fellow writers will understand that after papering the walls of one’s study with rejection notices, publication is a treat…but to win a competition is, well, something entirely new for me. Profound thanks to Bruce Beasley for the editorial guidance and discerning questions which yielded my three winning poems. The poems in question “Solicitation,” “My Life as a Damascene Sword,” and ”When we Swam Together,” will be published at the end of January.

Ashes, Ashes Paradise is raining ash. Skies fill with blistered amber, lives upon lives swept up, flowing down California’s keening body, headed for the sea. Masked, we cough and grieve— our bodies do not want the weight of lives combusted, our bodies can not hold this reeking burden, charred. Place and its people, forest and its animals. Memories drift in shock. Stumbling. Riven. Here stands apocalypse— Paradise is lost. I wrote this during the Paradise, California fire, aka “The Camp Fire.” It was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history to date. It was also the deadliest wildfire in the United States since the Cloquet fire in 1918,…

Falling Silently I am the owl the mouse the snow the day Slain and slayer white and ruby fierce pride and panicked leap From “Poems, 2018” by Adrienne Asher