The Whitest Sheets

My second chapbook, The Whitest Sheets, was released today. I'm particularly excited about the cover art (by Debra Howell)

In general its a very different little book than my first one--much more emotion-driven and raw (if that is the right word), I feel. But I guess readers can determine for themselves how it is different or not so different.

sample poem:

Breadcrumbs

Lying across the unmade
bed. The room would be
dark if it were not
for the pale seeping
through the blinds, drawn
to hide the dripping world.
She doesn’t want to see it like this,
it was so glorified yesterday:
pink and blue azaleas, sumac and oak,
the crows killing a young rabbit,
first one dive, then another.
She thinks of the flowers
she saw on the mountain:
white like breadcrumbs
in the tangled confusion
of fallen leaves and branches.
An open secret.
The way you leave a diary
on a bookshelf in the living room,
between two ordinary books.
The way a word will hang
in the air, a hinge undone.
On the bed, tracing the stitches
in a star-patterned quilt
not made for her. Delicate
wren movements, quick and fragile,
the small bones of her wrist.
She could get up and raise the blinds.
She could knock on the neighbor’s door
for a long afternoon of hot soup,
fruit salad, Wheel of Fortune.
The day passes her as a stranger on a train
who paused for the scent of her hair.
Drowns her out like applause,
like many people laughing.