TWO CHERRIES
we feature work by poets we love
Susanne Dyckman + Elizabeth Robinson
Featured Poet #7 | Raina J. León, PhD
Raina J. León, PhD is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra : (dis)locate, and the chapbooks, profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies and attended retreats with The Watering Hole, the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant. She retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California, only the third Black person (all Black women) and the first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there; she is professor emerita there. She teaches poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer. She is an enrolled Higuayagua Taíno tribal member and (very slowly) learning Hiwatahia.
Check out my bookshop here!
You can get my newest book, black god mother this body, here.
@rainaleon
(Tiktok @rainajleon)
charlene isn’t dead
on the day my mother shows
me the marker for aunt doris
forty years dead and only now
her body’s place capped in gray stone
she tells me the story of charlene
the last person buried at clearview
before they died, one day they saw
my mother in town
calling out, “cousin norma, you know
my name is charlene, right?”
she was bold
it was the early 90s
and i imagine her saunter
feather boas and glorious
in a town that wanted her boxed
in a particular way of being seen
male
hair close-clipped
on sunday suited and tied
i imagine their bright earrings
extravagance scripted on their clothes
her defiant sway to remind herself
and the piercing world
the body can be a portal of joy
on the stone his family
had the chisel mark charles
and it was true
charles was dead
but charlene dances
at the cemetery’s entrance
and she fly
and she flies
and she still
flies
mr. h has a trump sign in his yard
at the edge of the cemetery
mr. h has his house
his rusty wind chimes
his tree-shaded porch
he has a trump sign in his front yard
dead black people buried behind him
for decades the grass grew higher than the stones
my grandfather trimmed it down
set the veteran flags that he knew
he died
the flags tattered
mr. h was a veteran
and could not witness a veteran’s service
be made threadbare by silence
he bought himself a mower
a weedwacker
and took to the work
he cut the grass
to a boot camp boy’s trim
set new flags down on veteran’s day
and memorial
he tends the dead
better than the living
black dead
some soldiers from wars
before the nation was nation
mr. h. has a trump sign in his front yard
pearl-handled
for Doris Rheubottom
where she lived in north philly
renting a room on the third floor of a shared house
her closet filled to bursting with sequins, taffeta
satin sheen and silks
it was rough
each day she mounted the bus with her steadying cane
rode it out to the main line
for day work for the parnas family
she watched a city open in hard lines
seeing and unseen
rode back with a black woman’s fatigue
the weight
street lights popped into brightness before her
aren’t you scared, aunt doris?
walking home by yourself so late
my mother asked, country girl that she still was then
aunt doris just lifted her house skirt
up high on her tight and wrinkled thigh
to the pearl-handled gun
strapped and ready
a glint in her eye
my neighbors are good and they know who i am.
we never knew enough,
but we learn.
aunt doris sings i’m doing what i’m doing for love
where are the ones who break laws
flaunt their shimmy
flash their legs to tantalize
my sisters now
billie, pearl, even a princess named olga
they are all dead
and here i am old
and still sassing
it hurts my eyes to follow the loops
of this bill’s words
or that one’s numbers
and i don’t have the hop i used to
taking the apartment stairs
count basie knew how to count them in
but the only horns blaring now belong
to the cars rushing me along
to the bus
my thighs remember the grip
of my man’s head to his work
as much as they remember how to dance
propel my legs up high and kick the sky
held aloft almost to flight
oh, i could swing
they called me the queen of swing
a prized singer of the colored race
the blue streak of harlem
a mezzosoprano of demure dignity
sweet singer of the south
maybe south of pittsburgh
and my lungs remember how to hold
a whole hurricane of bellow
as well as the delicate husk of fall
so restrained that millions of radio listeners
would lean in to catch my punctuated breath
there was no one like me
no one like me
and you don’t know my name
aunt doris at the grave of francis who died in 1947 of TB
more my son than my son
a song bleeds petals in your throat
my sister’s body swells with another boy’s body
the ground gnaws beneath the snow for you
more my son than my son
oh lyric baritone to my mezzo soprano
you are dead and shouldn’t be
a pandemic. crimson spray on your lips
it’s cruel to carry your sound in my mouth
you should sing for yourself
i can’t stop shouting
francis
francis
francis
start again at the beginning of the measure
Featured Poet #6 | Judy Halebsky
Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections, including Sky=Empty which won the New Issues Prize. With Ayako Takahashi, she translated Since Fukushima by Wago Ryoichi. On fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Culture, she spent five years living in Japan, where she trained in Butoh dance and Noh theatre. Her essay “Translations and Migrations of the Poetic Diary” was recently published in Global Haiku Reader. Her honors include fellowships from MacDowell, Millay, and the Vermont Studio Center as well as a Graves Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Humanities. She directs the MFA Creative Writing program at Dominican University of California.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47692/the-river-merchants-wife-a-letter-56d22853677f9
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1688412/a-song-of-changgan
Li Bai Poems
Between Jenner and a Pay Phone
on the longest day of June
dusk finally falls
I cut my hair flat across my forehead
Li Bai, the shadows tonight are from street lights
I’m in the middle of a parking lot
wondering where the locals drink beer
from now on:
only practical clothing
only blank pages
The Sky of Wu
It’s 4 a.m., the bar is closed, and Starbucks isn’t open yet, so they keep
talking, Li Bai at least. Du Fu is shuffling a deck of cards that is missing
the ace of spades.
Play anyway, Li Bai says
Du Fu hesitates
Li Bai wants to meet Robert Hass, but I don’t know his room number.
And he’s got a poem due tomorrow. How about hot chocolate? No dice.
Li Bai wants the party to start
(I have not been displaced by the war, discomforted maybe)
Du Fu keeps shuffling
Let’s write on a joker and make that an ace, I say
They scowl (novice)
(I write letters to Joshua in Kandahar, he sends pictures back
in uniform in a helicopter, tan with sunglasses, smiling)
Du Fu is smoking an e-cigarette. Li Bai is laughing at him. They want to
meet Charles Wright but I don’t have his number.
The night is already over. There’s nothing that’s going to start, except
the nature walk and then workshop.
We don’t write the poems together, I explain, we just talk about them
Li Bai rolls his eyes
America, he says, it’s worse than I thought
Li Bai Considers Online Dating
on a clear night and a full moon, I lie
on the grass and talk to friends far away
(note to self: before writing profile, eat cookies
then resolve to lose weight, then drink beer)
I carry little, move often
the distances between cities grow
right now I am fleeing arrest in another country
(leave this out, maybe?)
my chances of returning diminish
the mountains here are lush green, jasper green
a color that won’t translate but let’s try—
I sit in the lecture hall and check out the painters
I want one who quits early, who stays up late
who can lie with me in the grass
leave lines of charcoal down my thigh
I’ll cross the creek with my arms raised
to keep this letter dry
Li Bai Is Living in a Share House in the Temescal
I.
Converse sneakers, blue jeans, long hair tied back,
we meet in the morning to eat donuts.
At karaoke, I ask him, What’s your song?
He says, meta sequoia, dawn redwood—let that be me
(rubber tires and freeways notwithstanding)
the one that survived only in monasteries
to be brought back,
What are the chances?
and rooted here.
II.
They don’t have Nina Simone at karaoke. Or Joni Mitchell or Etta James.
Li Bai orders bourbon. They serve him lime soda and French fries.
Correction: it’s the gingko tree in the monasteries, not dawn redwood.
Extinction: in Oregon, they saw the eyelash pine needles in fossils
and found none living in places they knew.
Dawn redwood: living in stands in the forests of Hubei.
Du Fu is sleeping with headphones and an eye mask. He says, What are
you going to write poems about? There’s a war on.
It’s not a war, I explain, just police and protesters.
Li Bai makes a cardboard sign. It says Ocean Ocean.
River Merchant in Blue
of course I’m expecting you now
the butterflies are yellow with August
and you’ve sold everything you possibly could
between Gilroy and Weed
blue plum—a kind of apricot
in the damp heat of this summer night, wherever you are
blue for pale
blue for livid and leaden and bruised
know that I chose you as my spouse
you were never my king or my lord
blue for loyalty
blue for distant and unknown
a river merchant’s wife—
would I rather have married a farmer?
one who would walk up behind me
put his dirt hands on my waist
one who would know
blue is for young and fresh and green
rather than what we choose
I think sometimes love is what we can’t escape
Featured Poet #5 | MK Chavez
MK Chavez is an art monster, a siguanaba. They explore, write, and teach in the areas of mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process.
As founder of the Ouroboros Writing Lab, MK Chavez provides a nurturing space for writers who are changing the world. She is co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and curator of Lyrics & Dirges.
Chavez’s work is recognized with the PEN Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award.
Chavez’s offerings include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent collaborative work can be found as part of the art installation Manifest Differently.
https://www.ouroboroswritinglab.org/
https://www.instagram.com/mkchavez/
Self-Portrait as a Volcano Snail at the SFMOMA
Somewhere there lives the toughest
gastropod. You see
there’s a connection. Everywhere
everything, my sweet scaly foot.
The garden is a volcanic respite
for weary time travelers, visitors
and color coordinated art couples.
When I look at a dragon snail I know
life is fathomless. I visit the museum
& crawl around in my suit of armor.
Wear AirPods and vermillion lipstick.
My endoskeleton is made of iron
& I’m waving
flesh lacey skirts. Layer after layer
of meat with meaning.
Self-Portrait as Garden Machine
I’m mechanical & compound eyes. I have bells
in my unpredictable times. I’m nonsensical.
See everything and have a predilection
for counting things before they are hatched.
As if I had fangs & claw. Grasshoppers
are biblical. Stories about us are locust
and Jezebel. Last night I found a grasshopper
in my bedroom and we slept together breathing
in unison & making our legs sing until
we were sacred. Some people
would happily eat us. We are multi-colored
& prefer to live in the in-between, where everything
is possible. I ring my bells. I ring my bell.
Self-Portrait as Obsidian
after Kara Walker’s Installation, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden
Oh, and by the way, I am a witness
to the lights that make me dark bright
and jaunty. Hold on,
did someone just say sacred.
Is this some sort of picquerism.
And like a rock I do my thing.
And what do you bring me?
I’m watching my girl fly.
I am the future, and I pat the place
next to me.
Here, I beckon you on.
But really
all the guests ignore me.
I’m incandescent. From the heat
of the core. Some tension
to give a little birth.
The moment of release.
Self-Portrait as Corvus
I am a crow in a woman’s body.
Caw.
To open my beak & leak
sound into the world.
I am in a woman’s body
or so they tell me.
Not a songbird. A melancholia
follows knowing who you are.
I have grown eyes on the back of my head.
I’ve grown a third eye. Actually.
Eyes all over my body.
Susanne Dyckman is the author of the poetry collections A Dark Ordinary (Furniture Press Books), equilibrium’s form (Shearsman Books), and, with the poet Elizabeth Robinson, Rendered Paradise (Apogee Press). Her work has most recently appeared on-line in Posit #37, and as the chapbook After Effects published by palabrosa. She lives in the East Bay.
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of 20 books, including Rendered Paradise (with Susanne Dyckman), Thirst & Surfeit, and Excursive. Her poetry has earned the National Poetry Series for Pure Descent and the Fence Modern Poets Prize for Apprehend, among other recognitions.
Robinson has taught at the University of San Francisco, Naropa University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is currently a senior pastor at Orinda Community Church in the Bay Area and teaches at Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop. Robinson lives with her husband, poet Randy Prunty.
Rendered Paradise
A collaboration between Susanne Dyckman and Elizabeth Robinson
Excerpt from the section: A Very Small Gesture of Exultation
Poems for and from Agnes Martin
to accompany the vulnerable thing
to its destination
You see the pattern is between itself. Like
the hand on the fabric, sublimely unemphatic. To touch this way?
To touch is to create an imbalance, a fringe on the edge of what
one feels. It contracts, slightly, in its gut. Dark, like reassurance.
Unheeded. This is the order of the world,
a dissonance reshaped just so,
always just where I started
tracing a line from one hard point—
If I repeated myself, the second, third, etc. time around,
it was as though I heard its voice. Each voice. Voices unequal. And
contesting or related. Until: a fabric, rippling. Tight
at its gut. What is unequal swathed in perfection. Voices conjoined
touch that darkness
to the unknown end. See how it breaks here
and recovers itself. A bit of blue.
see how it breaks here
and recovers itself
When small waves go back on themselves
it is a type of sleep and yet also
a type of morning light. The gray is soft, the
rippling of thought an underlay.
I said yes. I said yet. Something very serene
and flat could pucker on itself and become a compass.
I said. First north, then west. I turn to perfection
as I see it in my mind. I said yet my mind.
What I’d like to talk about is what is not.
As memory overshadows, present
time reverses order in near-perfect lines.
I think I will not falter, will not fail.
Pastel direction. Uttered. A
very small gesture of exultation.
something very serene and flat could pucker on itself
and become a compass
Adventures are difficult. Diving into a color
to learn its name, walking a tightrope
more slack than first thought.
Foot slips over a wavering edge; the rose is actually gray.
None of this is abstraction. Not at all. The top says “top”
and the wash of pink that we would call “skin” is uneven, drowsy.
Skin like light seems to disappear when scrutinized too
closely. Look, I said. Awareness, not spirituality. My objections are not
moving through tenuous space for an answer,
a miraculous idea which is not an idea.
The line of blurred points ends,
intentionally smudged, our own shades—
abstractions. They are laughter. Laughter
obtrudes on abstraction, flushing the skin. On top of it.
the line of blurred points ends
Between the lines. Read and erase. Sit.
Space is made: a musical score to be written,
but ends with emptiness.
Stability wishes for a straight line,
grains of sand, embraced impermanence.
To be rock, or better, to be
a form for obedience.
Form, or below it: absolute. Not form, but
instead “perform,” all that arrives before—
yet over and over the hand writes “pre-form.” Over
and over makes the line straight, the way
—almost an afterthought—the way the hand
makes humility a signature well below the horizon.
“Everyone is on his own private line.”
Featured Collaborators #4 | Julie Rall + Valerie Witte + Sarah Rosenthal
Credit: K.B. Dixon
Julie Rall has been practicing her art in Portland, Oregon, since 1985. Julie has been renting a studio at NW Marine Art Works since November of 2020 and has been exploring the possibilities of mark making with squeegees on acrylic panels. She is searching for the limits of possibility in her paintings. The challenge is to embrace the connection between memory and place and create art where both can coexist.
Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, including A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie, 2023, finalist for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards, Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry); and One Thing Follows Another (punctum, 2025) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), both in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal. She has participated in residencies through The Hambidge Center, Ragdale Foundation, and La Porte Peinte Center for the Arts in Noyers, France. She previously served as a member of the poetry collectives Kelsey Street Press and Airlie Press. More at valeriewitte.com
Artwork by Julie Rall
Reintegration: A Q&A
By Valerie Witte
are the yellows oscillating: you can see the sun on a face, the rays
I’m excited to vibe with you : should we stagger our frequencies
why can’t you remember : I’m not sure you’re quite getting the gleam
eyes behind lids : where dreams flicker
you want to emerge from something, like a stairwell : are you still in descent
the point at which waves collapse incandescent : can you see where the reds crest
could we meet on the surface : an overlay ghosting our greens
what cost a lost memory : we fill in the gaps with our fragments
can I share some sounds with you : please exchange this dialogue equally
here’s a set of songs to spin : do you have a machine that can play them
what if you played me : when fingers find strings, our chords
an arrangement of partners or pairs : is this what we mean by progression
now I’ve interrupted your severance : must we unwind ourselves
I remind myself : what lies between measures
a brain makes its own beat : how stories form a pattern of overlapping hues
are we two tones twinned or twined : no one is hankering to unravel us
what is a break room : a place for separating our sorry selves
have I done something wrong : to resist splitting ask for forgiveness again and again
what blues dissolve to, surf or foam : could we hide in those swells, undulations
you can see more colors the longer you look : why force a way through when you can just ripple
can you feel how warm the waves are : what’s orange for
what would you like me to do : I can only forget so much
aren't you an inquisitive one : let’s try to line up our edges
can you see the perimeter : yes, we are nearly reintegrated
Notes: This poem was written as part of the Ekphraestival 2025 event in Portland, OR, in response to the piece Pull the Thread by Julie Rall. Some of the language is adapted from Season 1, Episode 2 of the TV show Severance.
Credit: Denise Newman
Sarah Rosenthal is the author of the full-length collections Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024), Lizard (Chax, 2016), Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009), and two books in collaboration with Valerie Witte: One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life Through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (Punctum, 2025) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System, 2019), as well as several chapbooks. She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area (Dalkey Archive, 2010). Her collaborative film We Agree on the Sun has received numerous accolades including Best Experimental Short, Berlin Independent Film Festival. A new collaborative film, Lizard Song, is currently on the film festival circuit. She has received the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, and residencies at This Will Take Time, Hambidge, New York Mills, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, and Ragdale, as well as a two-year term as Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. From 2012 to 2023, she served as a juror for the California Book Awards. More at sarahrosenthal.net
Excerpt from Untitled poem about a red box by Sarah Rosenthal
Untitled poem about a red box is a book-length poem about a handcrafted red box the size of a jewelry or takeout box on view in a small, dark, gallery-like space. On the surface of the box are embroidered objects that resemble butterflies or flowers; a poem threads its way in between these decorations. The viewers (a we comprising the narrator and readers) are given to understand that the poem, mysteriously, both is on and is the box, and that the poem is about death. Hanging above the red box there appear to be a series of similar boxes in other colors.
After the opening pages, which map out the above parameters, the manuscript consists of a series of poems that appear on the lid, in each case followed by an exploration of the poem’s manifestation and meaning. Each poem, we are given to understand, may be the poem––or not. What follows is one such poem (in italics) and the musing that results.
Youngwoman
freezes as
dressdummy
while friend
executes
guidelines per
online femininity
certification
trusses her in
white paper cuts
geometric shapes
into skintight
DIY couture her
mother enters
frowns asks
was this cooked up
by the dictator’s
daughter we
will not comply
secret relief
breathes mother
drapes dress
on real man-
nequin dips
wide brush
into paint can
smears red strokes
onto dress
Halt do we
troubled or
are we excited
by what seems
sewn there
on the red
lid barraged
are we by
new unknowns
why are we
being shown this
poem why now
we know how
the poem is about
death yet these
people seem so alive
the youngwoman
stockstill the
acquiescent friend
obeying directives
the mother a storm of
righteous refusal
or is it a whirling
joy of making
these three seem alive
so is it the dictator
and his daughter who
are dead
but they though
absent seem bent
on recruiting
pliable youth
for nefarious ends
dressed up as
empowerment
but perhaps
we might
describe such a
scheme as a kind
of death
do they rule
a deathkingdom
they almost
trapped her in
does that make
the mother life
splashing a joy of
red paint on white
but we may pause
the ooze of red
is both life-
death death-
life and what are
we are we dead
or dead again or
alive again
given we return
to thinking the
thought the people
are back but no
we recall not back not people
we’ve ever
encountered yet
do we feel we
know them
know the online
course
constricting
couture know
the dictator and
his fetching
enterprisedaughter
do we thrum
to the fury
of a mother who’s
had enough smears
red across brittle-
white the people are
back yet new
yet known
the blood runs
red ruins
the dress the
red streaks
blood of the
end or does it
birth a beginning
Blood the color
we may note of
the box
containing what
we know we
don’t know
unless we know
the dark
a dark
quiet within
and without
the box
a stillness
that sits like
we sit
letting the images
dissolve before
we glance
toward the lid
still seeking
a poem
still longing for
some words
to touch
like a sleeping
beloved to
kiss awake
like the red
lips of the
sleeping beloved
still yet ready
to move
to part
and say the
words I am
with you
to us here
a here that
may be
on the other
side of time
Featured Poet #3 | Vi Khi Nao
Photo credit: Scott Indermaur
Vi Khi Nao is a multidisciplinary writer working across poetry, fiction, theater, film, and collaborative art. She won the 2016 Nightboat Poetry Prize for The Old Philosopher and the 2017 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize for A Brief Alphabet of Torture. Her latest novel, The Italy Letters, was published by Melville House. A former Black Mountain Institute and the current 2024-2025 Iowa Artist fellow, she was awarded the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize in 2022.
Excerpt from Three Sapphic Movements
Featured Poet + Artist #2 | Alex Mattraw + Adam Thorman
Alex Mattraw is the author of the poetry collections Raw Anyone (2022), We fell into weather (2020), and small siren (2018), all with Brooklyn’s Cultural Society. Her poems and reviews have appeared in places including The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, Lana Turner, Tupelo Quarterly, VOLT and Action, Spectacle. A frequent collaborator with other writers and artists, she is also the founder and curator of the Bay Area reading series, Lone Glen, now in its twelfth year. https://www.alexmattraw.com
Adam Thorman is an artist, photographer and educator from Oakland, CA. His first book, Creatures Found, was published in 2024 by the Eriskay Connection. His work has been written about in the NY Times and LA Times. He has exhibited around the US and in Mexico and has work in the collection of SFMOMA. His collaborations with Alex Mattraw have also been featured in Heavy Feather Review, Posit, Tupelo Quarterly, and Radar. https://adamthorman.com/
Radio Homing
Why striate your spiral, wooden mind?
We tier dendritic hillsides. Mine memory.
Iodine needs uncounted like blood cells,
unconventional veins I cave. Misremember you
if subterranean stars shadow my half-life.
You step grass-song into timeloops. Centrifugal
our thoughts rust harder than feelings.
Salt recalls. Gravity tunnels what hours remain.
Featured Poet #1 | Tonya M. Foster
Poet, essayist, and Black womanist scholar, Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and a co-editor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include—Thingifications: :A Mathematics of Chaos (Ugly Duckling Presse); a 10th anniversary edition of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (belladonna*); Umbra Galaxy, Umbra Reader (a 2-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop) (Wesleyan University Press); and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). Her recent collaboration with musician-composer Julie Barwick “Creatures of Habit and History and Cycles” premiered as part of the opening concert of EarPlay’s 40th season. The libretto is drawn from Foster’s “Letters from Planetary Probation.” The 2023 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts', Dr. Foster holds the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University. Eldest of four daughters, she is New Orleans-raised by New Orleanians who were themselves raised by New Orleanians in that south of the south fabrication caught among the Mississippi river, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico. She lives in Emeryville, CA in an artist co-op.
excerpt from Letters from Planetary Probation: Amon (a poem in progress)
“what I want is to stop feeling guilty for what I am when what I am is necessary”
—wynonna earp in Season 4, episode 7.
1.
I dated a man whose fingers
were fat with his dissatisfaction
with his lot, with me. His lot
includes what he’s got and what’s no
longer his, what was never his (entirely,
but was always promised, supposedly, for
one of those such as he). Laws are articulated through
particulars though ain’ts like ants carry
relative mountains of dirt from here to some there
My wiry hair riven with ain’ts
from the families populating my genetically-appointed lot
which is, allegedly, overrun with standardized ain’ts
that might make of that man (and those like him)
a naturalized and necessary mountain or monument, depending.
This, I tried to tell
my Austrian therapist. She quipped
“Well, he can lose the weight”
as though the problem and the description were material,
were merely a matter of his will
to and over individual will
2.
On the regular, our moon casually (without known intent) eclipses—
given certain cyclical alignments—the sun—a dance
for three bodies, each living under its own
atmospheric conditions. the moon, an intermediary
and not. So easy to think its main “job” is to mirror
the sun’s light back—to make of it’s daily labor magic.
3.
We (creatures of habit and history and cycles
—drawn in elaborate shapes and stories),
despite what we make and claim,
track vectors for what we think
they will tell us about
where and when and why and who we are /I am
thought establishes thought adorns stone
and yet stone is just stone; the kitchen table
a platform for our formal arrangements.
i explained to the dissatisfied man
that i am a main character in my own life’s film
despite his desire
