Poems & Essays

Read Selected Poems:

“Caretta Caretta” in Orange Blossom Review

Poetry suite (5 poems from Cleave) in NAILED Magazine

“In the Middle Of” in The Night Heron Barks

“I Tell Anne Sexton about My Uterus” in Atticus Review

“Ode to Unlocked Windows,” “Purple,” and “Hushed” in Storyscape Issue 17

“How the World Keeps Me” in Storyscape Issue 14

Read Selected Essays:

“Poeming beyond Trauma” in NAILED Magazine

Review of & MORE BLACK by t’ai freedom ford in Run & Tell That

“Chantal Dupuy-Dunier: Caress the Essence of Experience,” Translator’s Note, Cerise Press

“Writing for a Theatre of Paper,” Interview with Chantal Dupuy-Dunier in French and English, Cerise Press

Review of Sanctificum by Chris Abani, Rattle

Read Selected Translations of Chantal Dupuy-Dunier (translated by Darla Himeles & Robyn Newkumet):

“(January 28)” and “(February 20)” in The Wide Shore

“(April 24)” in Cerise Press

“(June 6)” in Cerise Press

“(August 6)” in Cerise Press

Listen to Selected Poems

“In the Beginning” and “Clementines” for Get Fresh Books

Maine Postmark Poetry Contest Award Reading, Belfast Poetry Festival, Belfast Public Library, Belfast, ME (18 Oct. 2013)

“Dawn After Maine Votes Yes on Question One, Repealing Same-Sex Marriage” read by Michelle Greco

View & Listen:

Animation of “They'll Say the Blue Whale's Tongue Weighed as Much as an Elephant,” (below) by Ron Levin / Collaboration facilitated by Moving Words / winner, Moving Words 2017 Prize / accepted into EPOS International Film Festival, March 2017

Read (right here, right now):

They’ll Say the Blue Whale’s Tongue
Weighed As Much As an Elephant

Someday your daughter
will voice this fact
and ask

what an elephant was like

and you will find her
sunbaked tires
to pet

and heavy bovine leathers
and summer earth
whose anthills pulse

and you will bring her photos
of a trunk spiraled round
a paint-dipped brush

or splashing pond water
into an open mouth

and you will run with palm leaves
catching wind on either side
of your head

and rock the arc of your body
over couch cushions
to show how rescuers grunted

CPR in Bee Gees rhythm
on the last baby elephant,
his mother gone before him,

and your daughter will sketch
elephants from old books
and ask what they smelled like,

whether their stomachs were softer
than their backs.

You’ll swerve back to the weight
of an elephant, how even an elephant
eleven months with child

equaled but the tongue of the blue whale,
whose heft sung the fathoms.

But what if she asks the weight
of the blue whale’s voice?
How will you give her a song

that swelled the sea? A heart the size
of a Volkswagen, pounding?