It’s strange how you can write and write, revise and revise, submit and submit, and you wait for long stretches of time for something you’ve written to be published. And then, sometimes, multiple good things happen all at once.
Saturday, I received my copy of the new print issue of Coe Review. I was pleased to find my poem, “Balefire,” on page one of the new issue.
Balefire
The crimson king maple blows
in high winds, burns with October’s
beautiful death. Before my confused eyes,
leaves piled at the tree’s base form
wings, take flight and fall upwards.
A reversal of everything I know.
These small, light birds flash
grayish white undersides
before disappearing into
the crimson king’s flames.
Maybe they are
what field guides call
confusing fall warblers.
Maybe they are
some kind of finch,
but there are too many species
for my untrained eye.
Peterson’s doesn’t state
which birds have enough magic
to fly into fire.
Science is silent on why
some blazes appear as signal beacons
though they were built
as funeral pyres.
On Sunday, New Verse News published my poem, “The Water-Carrier’s Prayer,” which I like to think of as a love poem to US Congressman Devin Nunes. #resist
New Verse News is publishing some great progressive poetry, and I’m really proud to have this poem published with them. It was also a lot of fun to skewer the very less than honorable Devil Nunes.
The Water-Carrier’s Prayer
Devin Nunes, hallowed be your name.
Hallowed be your midnight runs,
your dark-of-night dashes. Your fake news
echoes from Pennsylvania Avenue
and Capitol Hill across Merika
(“I love the uneducated!”)
as it does in Mar-A-Lago…
(read the entire poem online at New Verse News: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-water-carriers-prayer.html)
Denton Loving 