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BiographyI was born in Washington, D.C., the sixth child of an environmentalist and an arts activist, and grew up on The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, assassinations, and Earth Day. I eventually earned a B.A. and an M.A, both in American literature, from George Washington University, and went on to teach at community colleges in Virginia, New Mexico and Oregon, and to work as a legal aide on behalf of Navajo uranium miners pursuing compensation from the U.S. Justice Department. In 2006 I completed an M.F.A. in poetry at New England College, where I was lucky enough to study with Gerald Stern, Alicia Ostriker, Maxine Kumin, and Anne Marie Macari, among others. Since then, I’ve taught creative writing, literature and composition at the University of New Mexico and the University of Nevada (where I’m currently a lecturer in writing). My poems and short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five publications, including literary journals, magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and I’ve published five books of poetry: Learning the Language (Bellowing Ark Press, 1997), First Identity (Redgreene Press, 2000; Winner of the 2000 Redgreene Press Chapbook Award), Home in the Dark (Sunstone Press, 2002), Another Anatomy (Finishing Line Press, 2007; Semi-finalist, 2006 Finishing Line Press Chapbook Award), and The Welcome Table (University of New Mexico Press, 2009; Winner, 2009 New Mexico Book Award). One of my great pleasures and satisfactions has been working with students of all ages and backgrounds, from all over the U.S. and beyond. A good many of the writers I’ve worked with have gone on to publish their poems and stories in small and large press venues; at least four have published books. Lorraine Schechter, a former student, recently won the 2008 New Mexico Book Award for Poetry for her volume, The Seasons of Yes, a book I highly recommend. (By the way, Lorraine is also the artist whose wonderful images adorn the covers of my last two books. To check out more of her stunning work, visit her Living Art Foundation online.) Thanks for visiting. Take a look around and come back soon. This site is a work-in-progress; I plan to keep adding features over time. Don’t hesitate to send me comments and questions. It may take awhile, especially if I’m in the middle of a semester, but I promise I’ll eventually get back to you. Pilgrimage I'm tired of monotheism. I, for one, for many, prefer the cockroach emerging from the ivy, reading the night with quivering antennae, the fat rattlesnake that turned me back out of the canyon's rocky throat, presences in a hallway of willows. Yesterday we scrubbed slippery, clayish mud from the season's first potatoes, their irregular roundnesses all the psalms my palms ever wanted. I traveled more than half a life to get here--just don't ask me how. I left the cat sleeping beneath the morning table and walked out along the dry rain ditch that runs behind neighborhoods stunned by heat, past grass banks burnt the color of hay, faltering cinder-block walls, waves of orange trumpet and grape vines breaking over fences, a tree house rotting in the green branches of the mulberry, its tenant having long since descended. I walk toward mountains I will not reach, toward my death, but the mourning doves and sumacs walk their own stories. One minute I'm alone, and the next belongs to leaves and ghosts. How many voices have frequented that catalpa? Who is wandering my blood? I build a shrine in my feet for worlds to come through. I let the wind arrange the windows. |
