The Ninth Floor was published in the December, 2025 issue of The Poetry Habitat.

For the victims of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on March 25, 1911, who in a scant 15 minutes died of asphyxiation, burns, and blunt-force trauma.

They’d locked all the doors—

To make sure there were no thefts.
To make sure no one left their work.
To make sure the union stayed out.
To make sure they made the most money:

Taliban Girl appeared in the winter issue of After/Thought Literary Journal.

In memory of Ugandan marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei and of the unnamed junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College; in honor of survivor Gisèle Pelicot; and for all silenced and abused women everywhere.

Yesterday, she lost her voice (it had long
been quieted, but they made it official:
women cannot sing in the streets, in public,
anywhere under the male gaze) because

Confession appeared in the winter issue of After/Thought Literary Journal.

For all who died in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but most especially for peaceful protesters murdered by English paratroopers on January 30, 1972, a day subsequently known as Bloody Sunday.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one year since
my last confession. One year since I could speak without sins
on sins, death on death, pain and dark nights and bless me, Father. 

The Edge is Not the End appeared in the winter issue of After/Thought Literary Journal.

Voyager 2 is a space probe launched in 1977 to study a generational alignment of the farthest planets. It extraordinarily continued to fly after completing its mission, and in 2018 crossed the protective bubble of our solar system and entered the heliopause.

And finally she went through a wall of fire. (I call her she, but in truth we are speaking of a tiny machine built by hand and conversing in archaic Assembly language; it's that fragility and strength which make me choose to see her as female.) Almost fifty years ago she traveled past the planetary giants she was tasked to document, sending home her tourist photos, her traveler’s impressions of foreign worlds. But she wasn’t finished…

The Threshold of Night was published in the Amethyst Review.

Compline is the Church’s night prayer, facing the danger at the edge of darkness, rendering time holy, quieting minds for rest.

Compline starts with stillness.
Silence. Candlelight flickering.
Shadows dancing on ancient
talismans: wait for it—

The Dead Wife Among the Fairies appeared in the winter solstice 2025 issue of Eternal Haunted Summer.

A tale from the Orkney islands.

A lighthouse keeper’s wife died, and in his grief he visited a witch who taught him to summon his wifefrom the Otherworld, snatching her back from the fairies. The trick worked, and thereafter every month on the full moon he summoned his dead wife to be with him again for that one night.

No one, of course, asked the wife if she wished to return.

When the Whales Leave was published in Issue #2 (December, 2025) of Harrow House Journal.

And I stand watching the sunset dipping
gold and purple into the ocean and think
about what it will be like
when the whales leave—

How to Survive a Tsunami appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Poetry Lighthouse. 

It was also part of a 2025 Mutual Muses exhibit at the Cotuit Center for the Arts.

The best way to survive a tsunami
is to not be where it
happens.

This can be harder than you might
think. We’re attracted
to the wild,

The Time of the Fires was published in the December 2025 issue of The Poetry Lighthouse.

Written the very long day of January 20, 2025, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day shared the calendar with the second inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Plato insisted: no poets in the Republic. He
feared the power they could assume,
speaking of passions rather than rational
order, of beauty and despair instead
of virtuous behavior.

A Consolation Prize appeared in the December 2025 issue of The Poetry Lighthouse.

It was Rachel who said, I love Emily Post. She asked me to tell her
when the big white book filled with intricate orders of service
arrived at the bookshop. You read Emily Post? I asked her, waiting

Published in issue #7 of Beach Chair Press.

Wealthy property owners in my seaside
town all love how quaint the houses are—
then tear them down to make instead
mansions with glass walls facing the sea.
There is always construction here.

Published in Dissident Voice.

Before fascism came to America, I imagined
lives lived surreptitiously, resistance fighters
drinking harsh red wine in stone-flagged
kitchens at night by flickering firelight;

Included in the anthology Midnight Ink from Livina Press.

And now, with the darkness, the ghosts arrive. 

My mother, dead these many years,
a shadow fluttering in the moonlight:
on these endless nights it is her voice
I hear. I try not to listen. I wander instead
as disconnected as the ghosts themselves
through empty echoing rooms in my mind.

Published in the “Blown Away” anthology at Red Wolf Journal.

I live now, in my late middle age,
in a seaside town I’ve chosen
because it is a place where I
do not lock my door.

This was not always the case.

Published in the The Merganser Magazine.

I thought I saw an angel once, the air
alive with the beating of ethereal wings
whispers of a world yet to be born out
of the dustbins and doubt of our own.

Given by God, or astronomical event—
it doesn’t matter: I saw hope. I saw

Published in the The Glass Post.

I have been in too many cemeteries, read
too many headstones, wept with too many
grieving stone angels. You must understand:
I’ve often thought of killing myself.
It’s a long and honored tradition.

I live in a place they call land’s end:
I think a lot about the beyond. Beyond

Published in the Bethelem Writers Roundtable Archive.

I hear people look up their exes
on Google. I have an ex, too:
it’s the convent I once called
my home. Then, the nuns
were hundreds strong
(not including those deployed

Published in the On Gaia Literary Magazine.

Content warning: reference of SA

They keep the objects collected in plastic bags.
A museum of dead things, a compilation of objects
used to sustain life where life is no longer. Forced
to leave home, what do you decide to take?

           A comb, a jackknife, a religious medal
            A pen, a Boston Red Sox cap

Some cool statistics for one of my poems!

Ekartic poem written to reflect art from the permanent collection of the Cape Cod Museum of Art.