Four Reviews and a Poem

Here are links to my latest Willamette Week reviews:

Uncle Vanya

The Brother and the Bird

The Play About My Father

Perfect Arrangement

Between shows, I'm also a poet.

Here's a poem that was published in Quintessence: Aspects of the Soul.

Today

Too many words

crowding my brain,

tickle of ants,

beating wings –

synonyms scratching hyperboles,

while twining lines compete with a cacophony

of talons and beaks

and crowns of striped fungi sprout

with the perpetual reach

of new fingers rising

from the fragrant wounds

of felled trees –

add to this an abundance of furred verbs:

slink, scurry, stalk and pounce –

I can almost taste the raw flesh

dangling from their mouths.

Sometimes I just want

to lie on the grass

and feel the warm hands

of the earth hold my back –

I want to look up and find clouds

that are simply clouds,

not the grandfather I never met

raising his ax.

Today I’m determined

to look at clouds and see

nothing but water and scattered light –

a collective sigh cradled by sky.