Category Archives: poems

This poem deserves a codpiece.

*EDIT: This poem was accepted for publication by World Enough Writers for their Last Call: Anthology of Beer, Wine & Spirits, released July, 2018!

Notes from April, 2017:

I challenged myself to a poem-a-day for April (NaPoWriMo). I’d made it to April 17 before Life Happened, but April 13 is the most exciting day to me so far. It’s when I wrote this poem while waiting for a friend at P&G. Yes, I was drinking a stout at the time. Yes, it was that good (a Founder’s KBS, in case you’re wondering, though the poem contains an homage to another favorite of mine, local Swamphead Brewery’s Midnight Oil).

I can’t get over how much I love this poem. I’m not sure why. It feels like it must be shouted at top volume in pubs and hole-in-the-wall microbreweries and seedy bars around the world while holding aloft a snifter of thick, well-muscled, knock-you-on-your-ass brew. I haven’t made a practice of recording my poems to share, and I’m generally protective about posting unpublished poems* on this blog since many markets consider that tantamount to “previous publication,” thus exempting it from submission.

And yet. Here we are.

Hope you like it. If you recite it somewhere aloud in some half-lit dive, I hope you’ll let me know 🙂

Text is below. Enjoy ❤

Ode to a Stout
First appeared in Last Call: Anthology of Beer, Wine & Spirits by World Enough Writers (July, 2018)

IMG_20180730_205109

© 2018 Samara. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement

“On Breaking” up at Uppagus

Many thanks to Zig and Jude for creating a real thing in the world, and for letting me play, too.

Please note that some of these blog entries are short to encourage you to click through to the original journal to read, if available online. In the event the poem is no longer available for any reason or the poem(s) appeared in print only, I will post the text as published here on my blog, with purchase links to support the journal if applicable. Thank you!

“Parallax” up at Bird’s Thumb

This poem, appearing in the Feb 2018 issue of Bird’s Thumb, was one of those I really worked for, undergoing numerous revisions before it was abandoned (published). It contains references to a particular scientific effect in relation to two people within a relationship that is, well, circling the drain.

Thank you for giving it your attention, and many thanks to Nina and Sahar at BT for including my work!

inotherworlds

2 poems up at Plum Tree Tavern

“we do not touch our living / half so well as elephants touch their dead” and “The way back” are both up at Plum Tree Tavern. The first poem arose out of a tangent to revisions on a different elephant poem, which may yet be finished or abandoned (not just now though). I hope you give them a read and find some good in them for your day. Many thanks to the PT Innkeeper Russ Streur for including my work!

❤

2 poems up at Ekphrastic Review

Ekphrastic poetry (poems inspired by and written about works of visual art) has always been interesting to me, how different media interact, imagery and words in close relation. I have a small (as yet unpublished) collection of such pairings, a selection from which Ekphrastic Review recently accepted and published, “nocturna.”

Take a look at it (or the other one, a reprint called “the angry boy“), and stay to read some of the other incredible work shared on the site. I see it as something of a window to the writer’s process. The paintings or photographs (or links to them) that inspired each poem are included for your viewing pleasure! Interesting stuff.

Many thanks to Lorette Luzajic for including my work.

“Implicate Knitting” (2010)

322 Review is now defunct, but before that, they published this (no archive available):

Implicate Knitting
First appeared in 322 Review (2010)

The warm bamboo needles slide mathematically
within the curves of my practiced fingers:
snick
through
under,
loop back lift.

The pear-green wool links to itself
in the recursive continuum of a single knot
any physicist would recognize—
string theory.
Somehow,
a scarf emerges.

The equations of warmth are indecipherable to me,
like the dozens of people who call me friend
but who wouldn’t know the heavy stitches
that bind me together
if they tore them out personally.
Some of them have tried, seems like.
The names they use for closeness
are scratchy like the wool, and odd—
their friendship, mis-stitched and holey.

On these cold days,
I’m divisible by zero.
I knit, and watch my stash of scarves grow.