Everything's Coming Up Opossums

​With the sun in Scorpio and the moon in Gemini, I couldn't be a prouder parent to a stranger creature. Yes, I'm talking books! Lay Down Your Fleece, my latest chapbook published by Shirt Pocket Press, arrived today. Inside, you will find at least four poems that have never before appeared in print, along with a veritable barnyard of animals (horses, pigs, opossum, mice, dogs, and gulls), one Breitbart reference, and many pieces that are no longer available via other sources (bless the journals that survive and those that don't.)

This is my slim, Southern collection so I promise you vernacular and all the things a girl raised in the South, but not of the South, can give you via line break and lyric. Think of all the reasons a poet might lay down her fleece, then turn to the fifth poem to find out the real answer. 

If you, too, would like a copy to peruse or with which to snuggle, you're most welcome to buy one directly from the press  (it may state that it is unavailable, please disregard this and click on the pre-order option and it will deliver you to PayPal where you may buy one or more copies for $8/each) or at one of my upcoming readings--like say, tomorrow night at Vermillion when I read for great weather for media (7-9 pm). You will be there, right? 

But for now, a poem:

It wasn’t Limerick, Ireland
 
but Pennsylvania and I
turned the key but the key
 
didn’t turn the car.
 
                        You ran back
and forth across the street
as though you were
 
conducting a relay with time
but time didn’t listen
 
and you, with your parts--
 
            question of which
combination, when.
I took to the shade as any
 
in heat, stood by a tree
that bore apples all meal--
 
I offered you.
 
            You told me the battery
was what I needed. I told you
to make my car go.
 
If there was a field
full of corn, then
 
one of us was the silence.

(Previously Published in The Blueshift Journal, subsequently published in Lay Down Your Fleece, Shirt Pocket Press, 2017.)